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tv   U.S. House of Representatives  CSPAN  October 4, 2012 1:00pm-5:00pm EDT

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>> president obama wrapping up his rally in denver and meeting with the audience after his comments. we are opening up the phone winds, as we did all evening after the debate and all morning on "washington journal." here are the numbers for you. you can also follow us on facebook and on twitter. we are using hashtag #cspan2012. tom is on our republicans' line. what do you think of the debates
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last night and the president's comments this afternoon? >> hello? >> tom, go ahead. >> maybe it is because i tutor children in languages and math, but i was listening to the president and his speech today talk about how he is reducing the deficit by ending the war and nev -- war in afghanistan and using the money saved to bring down the deficit. the simple term for that is that we will no longer be spending money for that war. we will no longer be taking money pile up in one place and moving it to another. the use of language is very bad on this. it even was last night, when he spoke not from a prepared plan, but just from talking points. i found that when romney would offer something specific, except for a few points that barack obama had repeatedly used in
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speeches about where he was saving money or will the health benefits were coming from, he would not back up his statements with hard information. i found that in the speech he was making today. >> a tweet from marji. donald on our independent line. is that clarksville, tennessee? maryland? >> virginia. ok, first of all let me go back to what the man said a few minutes ago. common sense would tell you that if you are spending money where it is not needed, then that money could be used to spend on other programs, and the money that you are not spending on
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those programs, you could save that money and that would keep you from the deficit going up and up and up. that is, and math. unfortunately -- that is common math. unfortunately, that is the problem with many mitt romney supporters. they do not understand common math. mitt romney told america lies last night, and the sad thing about it is that so many poor and middle-class americans will believe them all because he looked as if he bullied a moderator. "oh, he is going to make a great president --" >> on what particular thing did he lie? >> like the president pointed out, he said a few years ago that we did not need any more
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teachers, ok? now last night, he said that he is not going to get rid of teachers, just like he told us about how he is going to save american money. >> donald from clarksville, virginia. this is julie. go ahead. >> i think that the president did very well last night. i think he took the high road by not getting into arguments about what romney was doing. as far as he was going to keep teachers -- i'm still amazed that he looked jim lehrer right in the face and said "i am going to cut pbs."
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i think the president just stood back and let it romney talk. i am not a middle-aged woman. i have been on disability now for a -- i am a middle-aged woman. i've been on disability now for about eight years to hear -- for about eight years. during the president's term, i've been able to go to college and i'm able to open my own small business next year, because i am able to go out on my own and purchase medical insurance because of the pre- existing condition that i've had since i was a teenager. i am finally at the point where i can have the dignity of having my own insurance, instead of being abandoned, 47% or whatever that romney would like to call me.
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also, with the economic patriotism, that is the most beautiful thing i think i have heard the president say. >> that is one of the, is the president made last night. the speech in denver is the first of the date for the president. he will head out to madison, wisconsin. it is also the first of the post-debate coverage here on c- span. mitt romney and paul ryan will be in virginia for a rally this evening. it is a rally and country music concert with trace adkins. we will follow that with your phone calls as well. tennessee. elliott, welcome. >> how are you doing today? >> fine, thanks. >> i would like to say about the speech obama just made -- i think he has had is time for the four years, and it seems like we
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are worse off than we have ever been. he has had his time to prove to us that he could do it, but he has not prove anything to us. the people on social security today are starving to death and he has not help us one bit. as far as the war in iraq, he says he has ended that. if he finds our man over there is still getting killed, why does and he just bring our man at home and get them out of theire? sir, i thank you for your time, and god bless you. >> on our debate hub at c- span.org, we have broken a speech down into various clips. as the rally started this
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afternoon in denver, president obama responded to some of the comments of mitt romney. here is how it looked this afternoon. [video clip] >> we also had our first debate last night. when i got onto the stage, i met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be mitt romney. [laughter] but it couldn't have been mitt romney, because the real mitt romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts to favor the wealthy. the fellow on stage last night said he did not know anything about that. [laughter] the real mitt romney it says we don't need any more teachers in our classrooms.
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[boos] don't boo, vote. [applause] >> some of the beginning of this rally this afternoon. about five more minutes of your phone calls, your reaction to the debate, what you saw in denver. columbia, maryland, on the independent line. >> good afternoon. just a couple of observations. i just watched obamas rally in denver. i just sat there thinking, wow, where was this guy last night? i really wish he had been a little tougher on romney. i think he had opportunity after opportunity to check him, but he didn't. but i still think in the end obama is going to win this. i just think the contrast is quite different. romney -- i sat there and listened to him tell a lie after
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lie after lie. people are not out on the news. they may not follow the news, or they may look at fox news and get all the information in there, but they should look at c-span, democracy now, and do their own research. >> where did you watch the debate last night? >> i actually watched it on c- span. >> thank you for that. he was mentioned one thing that president to show up in the debate last night -- wanting that president to show up in the debate last night. another view from chelsea. again, the hash tag is #cspan2012. we did our poll of who won the debate, and about 3800 for mitt
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romney, 2200 for president obama. don is on our democrats' line. >> i was disappointed in the president's performance last night. i watched it on c-span. 's plan goes into effect next year, it is not going to affect me, because i'm 65. but i'm worried about the seniors and the seniors to come. somebody needs to ask romney when he talks about, when he has a plan for the children of 26 to be on their parents' insurance, he has a plan, and he wants to send that to the private market. how much is that going to cost? that is the question. i was totally disappointed in the president's performance last night. >> let's go to the republicans'
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line. this is paul. >> it would be nice in the next debate if they had eight fact -- a factcheck.com screen, or if somebody said something, factcheck.com either validated that were debunked it. >> if you watched c-span2 last night, we were running some tweets, and i bet there are some sites doing that, but we had some real time tweets. >> i went back and forth between four stations -- >> [laughter] >> and i went through the aftermath of the debate, just to see what everybody would say. i watched "charlie rose" at 1:00, 2:00 in the morning. the second major concern i had
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was when romney said -- i am going to say "governor romney," in that we should respect president obama and governor romney, their positions -- his statement that we will keep our military strong. we have an excess of military contractors. we have massive abuse of military machine that could use a thinning out, and a little bit more accountability. i think if we curtailed some of that and put that towards education and infrastructure -- governor romney says we are going to build a 12 million jobs. what are you going to do? are they just going to come about? >> are you voting for governor romney? >> no, i am not.
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i'm voting for president obama again. >> charlottesville. go ahead with your comments. >> yes -- >> charlottesville, make sure you mute your television and then go ahead with your comments by otherwise there is a feedback. charlottesville, are you there? >> yeah, i am there. i am an independent voter. i moved to this country five years ago. i was a legal immigrant. when i came here, like president obama says, when we were caught, i did not have nothing to i worked so hard. i got the support of the government, and i am now a biochemistry major and in pre- med. governor romney is not telling
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the truth, like the president said. yes, he did not perform very well last night, but he was saying the truth. if you are president, if you are a candidate, you owe people the truth, because the truth has to serve you. if governor romney keeps with the things he has never set in the past -- he has been running as a conservative, has been running against abortion, many things in the primary -- >> thank you for the call. another view on immigration. let's get a couple more before we wrap up. sam in louisiana. >> hey, how are you, man? first of all, it is just stunning for me to hear democrats -- the views on how obama somehow won this debate
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but i don't see that as t all. i just don't see how obama answered any of the questions. he has lied over and over again about the $5 trillion tax cuts. on abc last night, jon karl said that is mostly fiction. multiple times. yes, both of them -- we are going to hear -- there wasn't much of a difference between both of them. i did not see obama differentiate himself -- >> you are planning to vote for mitt romney? >> yes, sir. >> thanks for the culprit last caller -- thanks for the call. at last caller on the independent line. >> i watched the debate last
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night on mute. >> did you watch it with closed caption? >> yes. i wanted to see the body language. i thought barack obama looked relaxed, a little too relaxed. overall, the body language, and then when i read the text, i think mitt romney shows a lack of integrity. that was the thing that kind of really bothered me, because he looked into the camera and said things that have been tested as far as being mostly false. i do believe that the president missed some opportunities. as a person who follows everything very closely, i did not want to hear something repeated, but i understand how people feel he should have used his rebuttal time in little more wisely. >> did you vote for barack obama
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in 2008? >> yes, i did. >> thank you for all your calls. the composition continues on line. the hash tag is #cspan2012. mitt romney and paul ryan will be in virginia and we will have that live at 6:45. presidential debates, two more left. one on october 16 at hofstra university, a town hall format. the last one in book raton -- boca raton focusing on a foreign policy. all that live on c-span, c-span radio, and c-span.org. >> we need to tackle our nation's challenges before they tackle us. we need to strengthen medicare and social security. we're putting ideas on the table to do that. we will save these benefits for seniors and my generation so
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that these promises are kept. >> they have laid out clearly, they say, what barack obama and joe biden did is they endangered medicare. they stole money from medicare for amacare, and you see the ads in here and everything they say. nothing could be further from the truth. >> october 11, congressman paul ryan and vice president joe biden will face off in their only debate. abc news' martha raddatz moderates, and you can watch our live debate preview starting at 7:00 p.m. eastern, followed by the debate at 9:00. follow our live coverage on c- span, c-span radio, an online at c-span.org. >> up next, a look at the immediate impact last night's debate had on of voters. charlie cook talked this morning with a republican pollster and
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democratic pollster. this is about 90 minutes. >> morning, everybody. if i could invite you to take your seats, we are going to go ahead and get started. thank you for joining us live on this rather humid thursday. thank you to everybody joining us on the live stream on nationaljournal.com and those of you viewing and listening on a c-span2 and the voice of america. i'm the senior vice president of national journal, and it is a pleasure to welcome you on behalf of all my colleagues for this wonderful discussion. before we get started, a few atoms to give a sense of what is coming.
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charlie will be up in, and he will give us his take on last night's debate and give, sure, colorful and set on what we can expect between now and november . he will be joined by two guests school will join him to offer their perspective on the debate and the upcoming elections. we are grateful to all our bridges since this morning. they will take questions from you all. think of what you would like to ask. we will have microphones point around and you can ask questions. we also have the conversation via twitter and we welcome your comments and insights there as well. finally, if you would not mind at silencing your cell phones, it would help us immensely. we are able to gather this morning things to the generosity and underwriting support of united technologies. it is a very diversified company comprised of several well-known
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brands known to many of you, and they also have utc climate controls and security and utc aerospace, which includes a good rich. utc has been a wonderful partner with "national journal." they also partnered with us on the congressional connection poll to get a sense of what is going on outside of washington and bring that news and information here. and as "national journal" daily readers, it can be informed via utc and the congressional connection poll as well. i want to thank the entire team for partnering with us not only on the charlie cook events, but on the congressional connection told. greg is the senior vice president of global government relations, and he feeds the government affairs activities for utc as well as their activities in china, russia, and
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the eu. he is well known in washington and well respected and very well liked. please welcome greg. [applause] >> thank you, victoria. >> you're welcome. >> charlie wanted to know when victoria was doing with such a nice introduction for me, for god's sakes. something must have happened last night. probably the nats in first place. [applause and boos] boo? what's with that. this is always a great event to participate in. this is an exciting moment after the debate. it looks like we may have a presidential race here. 33 days to go. everybody is looking forward to hearing from charlie, so we will hand it back over to you. thank you very much for being
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here. back to victoria. [applause] >> i think all of you know trolly cockpit that is why you are here -- i think all of you know charlie cooke. that is why you are here. he and his team put together some of the best political reports and analysis in town, and they are red and valued by both sides of the political aisle. at a time when news and information on political campaigns has become so polarized, charlie remains one of the most respected analysts 2 everybody in the country, providing a balanced and fair and often very humorous take on the ultimate sport of politics. charlie has been called the best political handicapper in the nation by "the new york times," and bob schieffer called "the cook report" "the bible of the political community." many of us think he walks on water. please welcome charlie cook. [applause]
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>> boy, if i can walk on water it must be pretty thick ice. thank you all for coming. if i am one of the most respected, boy, that is a low bar in this town. anyway, thank you very much. greg and i have been friends somewhere over 25 years, close to 30. this relationship with united technologies has been great. boy, this room -- you guys are in prince william county, they are in prince george's county. look at the span. thank you all for coming out. this is just quick reactions. i want to get to glen and fred, two of the very, very best pollsters and in the business. their firms are sort of the nordstroms on their respective sides of the aisle, just very, very large an enormously high
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quality and incredibly well regarded. and longtime good friends. i want to have plenty of time with those guys. just some quick reaction to what happened last night. unfortunately, i had to do a column that i had to hand in yesterday morning before the debate, and is not coming out until friday, although i got an e-mail from my editor, who was suggesting tweaking it a bit after yesterday. the point i tried to make is that, unfortunately, everybody tries to make everything by now. a race is either too close to call or is over. there is nothing in between. going into this debate, there really was an in-between situation, where clearly, president obama was ahead, and
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it was something that in the swing states was probably more durable than in the national numbers. governor romney desperately needed to shake this race up. something had to change the trajectory in this election, and it needed to be something very, very substantial. here we are now with something, a momentous event, and it was in the realm of the debates -- this is certainly much more decisive than, i think, pretty much any other debate that any of us here can remember. i thought governor romney did a fabulous job on both a relative basis -- in other words, comparing mitt romney with mitt romney performance is that we usually see. quite fabulous. and on a nominal basis, any standard, he did a very, very
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well. i think it is a true to say that president obama is a superior orator and i think mitt romney is a better debater. romney -- we saw something that we have not been seeing in a long time. it occurred to me that this reminded me more of the mitt romney i met in 1994, when he was running for the senate and came by and met with me and stu rothenberg and was just incredibly impressive and analytical and fact-driven, very pragmatic. this was that guy. not so much the person who had kind of been pretending to be an ideologue for the last few years. obama seemed to be like a team sitting on a lead. i would not have said "smug" at all. i would just say somebody who
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did not seem to be terribly hungry for it. i don't think there's any question that when you look at some of -- i am not really big in this instant polls, i don't particularly care for them. but to see on the cnn/opinion research corp. who did the best job -- obama 25, romney 67. who did better than expected? obama 21%, worse than expected, 61. romney, 82% said he did better than expected, 10% said they thought he did worse than they expected. my guess is that the 10% were partisans. democracy -- stan greenberg's firm, a democratic polling firm -- "romney has a good night but no evidence of changing the game." i agree completely on the first,
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that romney had a good night, and we want to see a couple of days whether it changes the day -- we will have to see in a couple of days whether it changes the game. wal-mart sponsored wal-mart mom focus groups with a democratic polling firm, and one of glen's partners said public opinion strategies together, suggesting that among a lot of these wal- mart moms, it was a win for -- the people in these groups were divided between a win for romney or a tie. they were disappointed with the president's performance. they did not believe he made the case for how another four years would be different or better. they made the point that neither one of these guys really connected with voters on a personal level, but clearly romney did a superior job of debating it. we'll be seeing a lot of reviews over the next few days.
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i think that the key thing for us to sort of watch is that there is no question that romney won the debate. the question is how much does this change things? in terms of national polls, no question he will get a few points out of this. but the harder and more relevant points is, number one, does he moved ohio? does he move a swing voters in swing states? that is what is really relevant here. i have no idea. my view has come to be over the last few weeks that you show me an undecided voter in a swing state like,, say, ohio, and they have been bombarded by ads since june. the undecideds there were a lot smaller than nationally. i concluded that, well, if you are in ohio and you are still
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undecided, you may never decide. and you are probably not going to vote. you know, there may be something wrong with you -- [laughter] i am not being dismissive, that this cannot change them, but the thing about it is we should be careful about imposing everybody in this room, or everybody watching on c-span or voice of america -- they will be very attentive people. we are paying a lot of attention to this, and we need to be careful about how some pretty passive people who don't like politics or politicians, who are very cynical and skeptical and sour, whether their reactions will be exactly the same as ours. but this is certainly a consequential event. i think that without any hesitation at all, had a disk on
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the other way, at mitt romney not done well -- had this gone the other way, had mitt romney not done well, this would have been game set match. republicans were starting to get nervous. you are on the verge of seeing a lot of money retasked over to republicans for hanging on to the house, making a desperate push to get every possible senate seat, but because this ronny thing is not going to happen. -- romney thing is not going to happen to it that would have happened had romney turned in a poor performance. he not only escaped that, he turned in an extremely strong one, and the president was flat, and the question is how much does this move in ohio, virginia, colorado, swing states. we are going to have a great discussion, and you will hear
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from two of the smartest people in the business. i think we need to probably just -- we can talk about it, we can discuss this, but sort of look see,e polls -- let's tonight is thursday night, friday night, saturday night -- start looking at polls on sunday, monday, tuesday, when you get full samples in, all after the debate, after people had the conversations in the supermarket aisles or at the coffee maker in the office, and see where this is. clearly this is a game changing event, but how much does it change? swing states are what matters. i think we will have a lot of fun. just 100 words or less -- i don't think even yesterday, with the day before the debate, in our view, the house was not in play.
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democrats were going to get -- democrats needed 25 seats to take a majority in the house. it was going to be somewhere between a watch and republicans missing in democrats picking up about 10 seats. there was no evidence whatsoever that this was heading towards 15 or 20 or 25 seats, particularly when you consider the democrats, because they have 10 of their own seats and they are probably going to lose, they needed 25 to net 35. it did not look that bad for republicans and it sure as hell does not look like that now in the aftermath of the debate. the senate -- i will make one prediction. i think there is a very, very fair chance that on, say, noon, wednesday after the election, we may not know who is going to be in the majority in the u.s. senate. we're looking at about 10 tossup
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races and a lot of these are 1-point races, two-point races. it makes my colleague jennifer duffy -- she pointed out that one in this class of the senate seats was last up in 2006, we had three states, montana, missouri, virginia, 4.8 million people voted total in those three states. those three state senate races, and the majority status of the u.s. senate, were decided by 66,600 votes out of 4.8 million. it was hanging by a thread. that is how close it was, and quite frankly, i think there are five or six races, seven races that could be decided by, pick a number, 200,000 votes total nationwide, controlled not only of the senate, but several
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seat margin, one way or the other. there is an enormous amount of volatility in the senate picture, and we will see how it plays out. glen -- we are just going to jump up there, right? why don't you join me, and we will have the fun. we will have a handful of questions, and then open up to the audience and let you guys ask questions and have a great morning. wow, bolger, you are on my left. that is awesome. [laughter] have the republican on my left. thank you, guys, for joining us, because you are incredibly busy. fred, how many races are you working on right now? >> one at a time. [laughter]
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>> give us a ballpark. >> 15 to 20. >> you are set up a little differently. >> a lot. >> these guys are seeing an enormous amount of data every week. bread on theot put spot, but it was not a good night. just quickly, what was your reaction to last night, and then we will go into what it means. >> first of all, as a yankees fan, nats fan, and romney fan, it was a pretty good night. [laughter] also, charlie, thanks for having fred and i. these are always fun to do. thanks to "national journal." i want to say to utc, i am a
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huge fan of your engines, when they worked. i am here. that is a good sign. how much did ronny and help his image, how much did he raise his favorables? the gap was in the favorability of the two candidates. romney came across to people as someone who was more genuine than they had realized, somebody who could make you think, ok, this guy could step into the oval office and have no problems doing it. i am not sure that any other republican running in the primaries would have been able to pull that off last night. and i am being generous. [laughter] the other factor is, we won't know this, i agree with you, these instant polls, but we do our dialing for the most part between 5:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
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at night. on the east coast and midwest, how do you do a national poll, starting at dialing at 10:30 on the east coast when everybody is going to bed, unless they are really sick and staying up and watching the post-debate discussions? heck, i did not even do that, because i had to get out early. the question is, among undecideds -- look, undecideds in this campaign, the first decision i make this into i want to vote for barack obama? he is the incumbent, the guy in charge the last four years. the answer is no, but there is something they are concerned about mitt romney, which is why they are still undecided. i think it is and decide undec -- undecideds -- a poll i did in
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10 states, a significant amount were undecided. did that 6% look at mitt romney last night and say, boy, this is somebody i feel a lot better about than i did going into this debate? i have to think that for -- some were not paying attention, some were -- for those that were paying attention, the answer has to be yes on that. i think there will be a bump in the polls for romney. 67% believe that romney won the debate. that, by the way, is astounding number usually with the debates, our guy thinks -- our side thinks our guy one, their side of things their -- their side thinks there guy won. >> quickly, glen, explain to a
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group of people -- i doubt if there is an undecided voter in this room -- [laughter] what does an undecided voter look like? >> they are the guy calling back the waiter in a restaurant because they have not made up their mind for dinner. [laughter] generally, undecided voters tended to be more younger women than anything else. in this case, what i am seeing is an even division between men and women. they tend to be more independent, some conservative -- somewhat conservative to moderate. only 18% of undecided voters in a swing states think that the country is going in the right direction. 7% said the country is on the wrong track, much more negative than the country as a whole. that is why bank ronny is poised to pick up some of them after
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the debate performance -- why romney is poised to pick up some of them after the debate performance. anybody who thinks the next debate will be the same as this one, i think they're making a mistake. >> fred, the debate was over, and i thought, wow, romney did pretty good, the president seemed pretty flat. and then watching the post- debate and watching some this morning, the romney performance went from here to hear -- here to here in the analysis. as someone who -- if you want to or not, pushback a little bit. obviously, romney did well, but keep in mind x. >> tell us how well the
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president did. >> come on, glen, your nice guy. [laughter] >> i want to echo glen and say thank you to "national journal" and utc. i think we agree, charlie is someone everyone dressed, because he plays it straight down the line -- everyone trust, because the places straight down the line. >> i am also in thin and handsome. [laughter] >> i have to deal with reality [laughter] at glen said. the issue for romney going in was like ability. i think you show likability and
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connection by what he did last night, single-minded focus. what his strength is and what the concern of the country is . for all of us in this room, where probably not undecided, i think the campaign probably take off, i don't know, 2009. for a lot of us who are consumers of news and all the words of politics -- followers of politics the convention, this started the campaign. for a lot of those voters -- let me back up. there are a lot of the ads that are playing but it does not mean that every person is watching them all the time. i think for the average person, the campaign started last night, and we have a long time left to go still.
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look, i think mitt romney did what he had to do. he made this a much more competitive general election. i think president obama -- i don't think he did as badly as the pundits are saying this morning. the next debate he will probably have a different demeanor. i think the debate last night was more important to mitt romney than barack obama. i don't know how much this really changes the landscape, because, look, this race is very competitive. if you look at the eight battleground states, depending on the polls president obama is winning at all of them, but the margins are pretty close. i think the other thing that the debates could do for democrats and the president, and also for the voters, for our side, too,
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it signals that the game is on, and i think you will see much more enthusiasm. people talk about the enthusiasm gap. the polling for nbc news and "the wall street journal" -- >> so you are the conspiracy -- the conspirators on the left wing polling -- >> barack obama is ahead by 50 points among latinos, but their enthusiasm was less than in 2008. that was another aspect of last night. >> glen, my thinking had been, while it was mathematically possible for romney to get to 270 electoral votes without ohio, michigan, pennsylvania,
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that was like a three- or four- cushion shot in pool. is ohio what we should be looking at more than anything else? >> that is a really good question, charlie, because it is much easier for mitt romney to win the presidency if he wins ohio. there is the reason no republican has won the presidency without winning ohio. is even more true. i entered this election cycle believing that there were three key states instead of just florida and ohio. i added a virginia to that list. if they are at the top, the next half level down his north carolina. -- is north carolina. look, clearly, governor romney is stronger in florida and virginia to build a very competitive state race now. ohio is a place where he does need a significant comeback.
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well taken,s are that for many voters, the election started last night. if he is going to have a comeback in ohio, it started last night. >> fred, and then we will open it up for the rest of you folks. president obama one last time, beat senator mccain by seven points. part of it was 66% of the vote, 18-to-29-year-olds, 16% of latino voters. african-americans, 95-for something like that absolutely rock-solid for the president. let's just assume rough parity with last time. the question was, as you
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suggested, the turnout levels among latino voters, and, i would add, young voters is very much questionable. when i go onto campuses, i cannot find a pulse. when you see our registration table, there might be a few people behind the table and nobody registering. there is just no pulse there. is it safe to say that the seven-point margin becomes six or five or four? turnout down between those two groups? just by necessity this is going to be a lot closer. >> in 2008 the president had the wind at his back. the seven-point margin for a democrat is big. that is historic march in for democrats. -- a historic margin for
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democrats. all of us expect this to be closer race. now with the early voting we have metrics. one of the things with all campaigns, every side -- there are more than two sides, so every side will be looking -- north carolina has the early vote, and half if not more will have avoided by election day. > -- will have a voted by election day. you can track and -- >> who they are. >> who they are and how early they voted. for presidents down to the city council, every aspect of the campaign matters. air ars are the ones -- air wars are the ones that get coverage because of tv, but the ground wars are equally important. the other thing about the structure of the electorate, at least in our "wall street journal" poll, nbc poll, that
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our firms collaborated on pre- debate, the president was winning independent voters by 13 points. in 2008, he defeated john mccain by 8. i will be looking at the independent numbers. the other thing, too, very quickly, and in terms of minorities and youth vote, the other thing about barack obama's election in 2008 was that he wants something on the order of 43% of the -- won something on the order of 40% of the white vote. look, the country is changing. in 2008, 3/for the electorate was white, down from the mid-to- high-80s years ago. in a very close election, i don't think anyone thought it would be a seven-point race.
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the metrics are there for him to win. >> to me the most -- sorry to interrupt -- to me the most stunning numbers from 2008 -- one, if you take out the 18-to- 29-year-olds, mccain and obama tied. that shows you how important the youth vote is. by the way, that is why use the air force one is showing up at universities in swing states. the other factor is that john mccain beat barack obama 55-43 among white voters. george w. bush in 2000 beat al gore among white voters 55-43. the margin is the same. so how did gore and bush essentially tied -- you might
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not have noticed, bush won that election -- [laughter] in the electoral college to a cool thing in the constitution. 8 years later, what what had been a popular vote tie it becomes a blowout. for mitt romney to win the popular vote, it is going to be by a point or two, if he wins at all. what that says that if we don't as a party figure out how to do much better with minority voters, particularly latinos -- african-americans, it will be hard to get more than 5% of their vote for a while, since the current president is black. they will vote for him. it is understandable. republicans have to do
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significantly better than we doing right now and in the future we have to do significantly better with latino voters. >> i think it is fair to say that republicans -- if you talk about the business model, the republican political model is not sustainable, the current one. 1 technical west -- one technical question. i look at a lot of polls, and the top line numbers look consistent, and then you start looking at splits and it starts getting more erratic. i see independent members of the map, and it seems to vary from one firm to the next. is that how they were to the party -- word the party id question? i have had polls in the last month where romney was ahead by five or six points among
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independents, which was obviously not the nbc-"wall street journal" poll. is there any reason for that other than the fact that when you start cutting it up, the margin of error goes up? >> when you were asking that question, i am thinking, one of the explanations could be just even a couple of days' difference between polls to make a difference. there is a recent w -- reason why there are independents. they don't have roots. i am a democrat, i know how i am going to vote. >> my colleague ron brownstein points to non-college educated white women as a group that has moved some in the last couple of weeks non-college-educated white
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men are kind of a no-fly zone for the president, but the women were more up for grabs. had you noticed anything like that, or is that a metric you are looking at? >> everybody talks about the women's vote as a it is monolithic, and it is not. there are a number of factors. people don't realize that john mccain won white women by seven points. that is not enough to win, given at republicans have to win white voters overall. but when you look at white women voters, they are more likely to vote republican, and that includes white women without college degrees, women who are married, particularly women who have children. when you look at the differences between white women who are married and white women who are single, whether it be not
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married, widowed, or divorced, those voters, those groups of voters overwhelmingly for obama. is ron is rig -- if ron is right and the president is making some gains with a non-college- educated white women, that is problematic for our side. i have not seen as much of a shift as he has noted. >> ok, let's open it up. >> everyone says -- >> are we doing mikes? here we go. >> people say the vp choices don't matter, but they are next up. given what happened last night, is it important, the next debate? does it mean that people are going to, based on what happened last night, say, "yes, now i am for sure going to be for romney
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?" does it have an pac -- as it have that kind of impact? could it? >> i think we all agreed this is going to be a closer race. in close races, everything matters. i think it will. historically, vice presidential debates don't matter a whole lot. somebody last night, cannot remember who it was, it made the point that lloyd bentsen destroyed dan quayle. did not make a difference, but he destroyed them. -- him. what you guys think? >> there are two presidential debates after that one. i think will be more watched by folks like us who are really interested in politics, whereas i think that the overall electorate is going to pay a lot more attention to the
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presidential. i am not downplaying the importance of the vice- presidential, but charlie is right. anything could make a difference, but it would be surprising to me. >> it is like in the olympics where they have basketball games for the bronze medal. everybody is waiting for the gold medal game. this is the bronze medal game. but you know what, it is the only debate next week. it is going to drive some of the coverage and continue some of the momentum that romney had after last night, or it will be seen, if a vice president might end as well, as the first step towards the obama-biden team getting its foot in back. i think it is important. in the media world we live in now, where everything is analyzed, instantaneously, even before happens --
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decpwhrits important until the next presidential debate and it rapidly becomes irrelevant. >> it's important until it's over. >> this is for entertainment purposes only. >> they're saying thank god we've got biden to pick us up after last night. >> if in politics as in some other things first impressions are the most important and if, in fact, the average american tuned in last night for the first time, would that suggestion that the next two presidential debates are less important? what's your opinion on how much the second and third presidential debates can matter now? >> i think they are still very significant. you look at -- it seems like
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ancient history now but reagan's first debate against mondale did not go well but he turned it around in the second debate and they wanted to re-elect reagan because things were going well and nobody remembered much from the first debate. i think it would be prema chure to say it was won and done after last night. >> i probably should have mentioned this earlier, sort of a disclaimer here. governor romney's pollster and priorities u.s.a., so besides being a republican pollster and a democratic pollster,
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everybody has dogs in the fight. i've been very very critical of the romney campaign, the part that glenn's partner has not been involved in. other aspects of the campaign, i've been very critical which an i think there were things that needed to happen and romney connecting with voters on a personal level needed to happen and it may have happened last night. so part of this may have been getting some tasks completed, some connections that probably should have happened in june or july or august or at the convention. so i think he's made up for some lost ground here but i think the next two debates -- it's a really close race, it's now going to be a really really close race. and everything is important. maybe we should alternate and
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go to the side. >> one demographic i don't think has come up this morning is senior citizens 65 and older. could you talk a little bit about how you're seeing polls of that depem graphic change and to the extent ha the selection of paul ryan and his liabilities on medicare is becoming a problem for the romney campaign and perhaps even in some of the senate races? >> who would like to go first? >> well, in 2008, if we just look at seniors in the exit polls, president obama lost seniors by eight points. and then in 2010 elections when the exit polls ago gaited, democrats had lost seniors by 20. which was one reason why 2010
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happened, which i'd like to forget. but then lock looking to our poll, the president was trailing seniors but close to the 2008 margin, nine points. i think paul ryan is a very smart person and i think clearly the romney team must feel he's qualified to be vice president of the united states. i think as an analyst, to us it reignited the whole medicare issue because we had spent a lot of time in senate and house campaigns talking about the ryan plan. and you know, sometimes we would talk about the ryan plan without saying the ryan plan because in april no one knew who paul ryan was. now they do. and now they know there is the
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ryan plan on medicare. so in the polling we've done and i'm sure glenn has done polling of his own. we've seen an effective message for democrats against republicans is to talk about the ryan plan and the plan on medicare. >> let me push back a little here. >> go ahead. >> a day or two before governor romney made his decision on running mate, i was talking with stan gleanberg, another pollster and he run it is democracy corp and they have been trying to use the ryan plan to basically beat republican members of congress about the head with the ryan plan. and they had with minimal success because of what you said, nobody knew who paul ryan
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was. and as we were getting off the phone, i said i'll give you this, i don't think governor romney is going to pick paul ryan. but if he does, we'll have another conversation. because it strikes me that democrats have not effectively made medicare and the ryan plan, -- i've seen the polling how it moves people in polls. i haven't seen them really inflict a lot of bodily damage on republicans on the ryan plan, on medicare so far. am i missing something? has it had a meaningful effect or not? >> i guess the flip answer will be we'll find out in 33 days. >> apparently we're going to find out in 33 days. >> the first observation i make
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is there's this presumption in the press paul ryan what a risk ki choice he was t. polling i'm doing now, when i test in swing states, test both joe biden and paul ryan's image, ryan generally has a better image than joe biden. so if joe biden is the answer, i don't know what the question is. and secondly, look, senior citizens, republicans have to -- we've had decades of dealing with democratic demagogue on senior issues whether it's social security or medicare or both. so we're well aware of look the first page in democratic campaign plans is minority turnout plans. the first plan in republicans is how do we not get hurt among senior citizens. so the campaigns are very aware
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of. we have messages we've tested in response. you test the attack that the democrats use, and yes, it is effective. you test a democratic attack versus a republican response attack and it plays to a tie. so i don't think it's going to be the game changer for the house that the democrats think that it is. the one thing to keep an eye on more than senior citizens are those 65 to 64-year-old. they're already getting social security. they know that the rug is not going to be pulled out from under them because there will be a huge price to pay. the near seniors are the ones to look at. so those are the ones we're targeting as well. >> could you guys discuss the
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impact of voter suppression efforts on election results versus polling results? we've seen an increase in the past few years in mostly illegal voter suppression efforts such as the recent conviction in maryland. but we've seen a huge increase in legal suppression issues requiring voter i.d.s and such. how do you account for that in polling especially given there are about ten cases pending now in federal courts where state courts could negate some of the new laws that are intended to require photo i.d.s for voters? >> the first observation is in terms of that case in maryland,
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that was one misguided example where it never should have happened, the race wasn't that close, so it was a huge mistake by that individual and he paid for it with time in prison. in terms of your concern about voter i.d., and having to show i.d., i live in virginia i just got my voter card. they allow anything like a utility bill or anything like that. it's a lot easier to go vote in america than get on an airplane. so if you're worried about fraud, i think these are reasonable requirements. >> i guess in terms of polling, to the extent that our firms can, we try to poll off a registered voter list so they are registered voters who presumably have -- and in elections we try to sample people who not only register
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but have voted in past elections. >> but this year the requirements for voting are not going to be just that you register, they're going to be that you have a voter i.d. how do you account for that? >> we ask they show their voter i.d. not a lot you can do. but first of all some of these places as you pointed out, they've been thrown out or they've been basically put aside for this election for further litigation. but i don't know, for me, i personally have no problem with requiring an i.d. as long as, number one, the government makes a proactive efforts to go to people who are qualified to vote, registered to vote but don't have i.d.s. and i wonder, for example, in some states why does an aspired
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and i'll say this for t.s.a. too, why does an expired drivers license not work? you're 93-year-old and your drivers license expired four years ago, what is the problem there? and also that it's cotcher, that a con seemed permit in texas is allowed, then why isn't a university of texas president student i.d. also issued by the state of texas also coach kosher. but i don't think it's onerous. i think people in nursing homes and other places, people do have i.d. and i think the government can help those people get i.d.s. but that should be part of the
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deal. >> yes. >> i was wondering if you could comment on the format for the debates, the three debates and how you see that connecting with the two candidates? >> we're speechless. first of all, i thought the debate last night was pretty good. i was stunned at how the moderator let himself kind of get walked over by the candidates in terms of the timing. it's like the two minutes didn't matter. when i'm about to die, i want obama's five seconds because they last forever. i thought it was pretty good on
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the other hand. people were like there is so much policy in this debate. both of these two people showed they're very smart people and that they both can be president. one by virtue of being president and the other by virtue of their showing last night. so i don't know if there's differences in the format of the next two. i haven't looked that far ahead. but i thought it worked out really well in terms of the back and forth. it was more of an actual debate than, you know, kind of a dinner talk or something. >> i agree. i am a political follower like all of you are. i like the elastic time constraints. i think in the debate, just let them talk. i don't think the format of the debate affected the performance
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of either candidate. i thought it was neat that they were talking a lot. >> it was more british style than american style which is good. >> i agree with both fred and glenn. and i would just add dorks i think he was a very weak mod ratetor? yes. it was as if there was none and in some ways, maybe that's the way it ought to be. it's about the candidates and not the moderator show boating it. >> i bet you if you ask both side supporters romney side would say obama talked longer and the opposite. president obama talked about five minutes or so, wasn't it? >> four and a half minutes more than romney but i think romney's was better. >> this was less was more.
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>> yes, sir. >> i was wondering if you're seeing in the senate races any differences between races where the republicans associated with the tea party and if not how turnout at the top of the ticket could effect that? >> there are a lot of important races in november, not just presidential. and i don't know the answer because what i was thinking is there are a lot of very close senate races that charlie was talking about in states that from my perspective that romney is probably going to win like indiana, missouri, north dakota, arizona and probably more. there are four states where
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democratic senate candidates are running very competitively with republicans. i just did a background survey in indiana with a republican pollster and joe donnelly was ahead by two points. and the other thing in american politics is people usually vote the party line. so i think that's going to be an interesting dynamic in the next four and a half weeks and i'm sure -- massachusetts is a good example for a republican perspective. and you know, right now, the democrats are doing well. you have a tea party candidate in indiana who won in the primary. that's a tight race. but you have solid republican
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candidates -- missouri maybe a month ago. but in arizona where democrats are competitive and i think it just shows these races are still fluid. if you can be undecided and we can say the race for president started for undecided voters yesterday, for some of these voters it's still going to be a couple of weeks before they engage. and i think the other thing going on here is i don't know if people vote in races like a which he is game but i do think people pick and choose one from ale a, one from ale b. one thing we haven't talked about is just the fundamental dissatisfaction americans have with government. how do they make those choices? >> i have to agree with fred for the most part and the only
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thing i would add is if you look at indiana for example, if luger had one his primary i know indiana wouldn't be on anybody's map. it's a very tight race because that didn't happen. given romney should win that state, i don't think -- i would be shocked if the democrats are chalking that one up as a win already. these are races that are going to go down to the wire and there's a number of them throughout the countryhether it's tea party related or not. >> my reaction is and i can think of som exceptions but like 2010, the teaarty movement is not really a p of mind concern for me right now. measure dock is clearly entifiedn indiana senate ea pa
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movement. i don't really nsidered to in in missouri, he's more of a precedes the tea party movement. and i'm not saying there aren' tea party people t er people i know were justive republicans before obama was elected. these folks voted for obama in 08 and suddenly became tea par in 2009 i don't really much on a -- it's just sort of not a thing i'm looking at quite so much this time. and to m it's more where you see enormously talented
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candidates and some okay and some that are not very good and how their campaigns are. and some are catching on. for example, i think two places that have surprised me like high high hawaii -- hawaii. i think there is a great campaign going on there. it doesn't seem to be happening. and that surprises me. maybe it does. and conversely in connecticut with linda mcman. my read early on was she spent $70 million in the years since 1994 and lusses badly. she's now running ahead. she's a better candidate, she's running a better campaign, she's got a democratic opponent who has turned out to be far
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more problematic and had issues a lot of us weren't familiar with before. and finally, i think women voters in the state who held the wrestling thing against her last year, they seem to have moved beyond it. it seems like it's old news and less relevant than it was. she is running very very well and arguing bli ahead. go figure. the tea party thing is not something that's on the top of my mind this year. it doesn't sound like it's so much on yours. >> let's go to this side of the room. >> i wanted to ask you about the 2004 analogy. you haven't talked about this. because basically we're headed for a similar election. the president defined the opponent, not a very popular president. the president was more the every man, the man you wanted
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to have a beer with. that changed last night, at least for the moment. where romney was the more approachable candidate. if you guys were looking at this and advicing the campaigns, how do you turn it for obama back to that original dynamic and how for romney do they continue where for the first time we know he has a pulse as a living individual? >> that's a great question. the thing that's been impressive for president obama in the polls is just like ability factor. and it's not just is he more down to earth than mitt romney, it's the whole package, the familiar li. they just sort of -- people connect with them even anti-obama voters.
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>> i think the hardest thing to do is to advice a campaign that's been running for four years. i don't work for them and they know way more about what they're facing than i do. my advice to them would be simple because they've got a lot of things to worry about. i think he needs to close the deal. i think he needs to say it's not about mitt romney anymore. i think what last night showed, it's about barack obama 6789 and i don't think they ran like they had this in the bag. i think they always figured this was going to be a close election which is why they started attacking mitt romney even before he was a nominee. i think their iv their number one imp per tive is to answer
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the question. and i think when they answer the question for the american people which we did in charlotte, and we've done it before, we can do it again. when they answer that question, that's when he will win reelection. >> there's no question that obama is -- the president is well liked and there is also a lot of folks who don't care for him very much. but a lot of people look at him and admire him. i admire him. he played golf 104 times in the last four years, i'd love to come anywhere close to that. in terms of advice for the romney campaign, charlie only told you half the story. my partner who is doing the campaign and whenever we talk
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it's about the nationals and that's pretty much it. so i'm going to hold bill off on combiving advice to the romney campaign. they've got a lot of people giving them advice. i hope they can capitalize on this newfound momentum. >> i thought the obama campaign ought to be paying some royal tiss to carl. because i think they study did that 2004 race closely and on certain things applied it very well. i mean for example, take one of your opponent's most important strengths and turn it into a weakness. john kerry's record and turn it into a weakness and then try to peel out some undecides and independent voters but after a certain point don't blow your whole campaign war which he is
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going after people who may not go your way, but instead go back and try to figure out how to inflate your turnout among your base. i think the obama has done extremely well at that. so i think that 2004, if you're going to look at a model, that is one to look at in terms of the strategy ememployed in this campaign on the obama side. >> if i could add one thing, i doubt carl is going everyday to check his mailbox for that check. >> i think that's pretty safe. >> we've got one in the middle. and then we're going to go back that way. >> i was just wondering as was
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said both the candidates showed they were qualified to be president last night. but i was wondering if you thought the demeanor was really the main factor lost night as opposed to the actual mellssadge they were sending because they both had their own fabblingts. but i was wondering if you thought it was the way they came out and the energy that they had or if what they're saying has as big an effect as the perception of how they're doing and how excited they are to be there. >> well the first observation is clearly aarp is lowered because it's membership age. i think the body language is important and i think that the president hurt himself with
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that. i don't think that the romney side should think that he's going to be like that in the next debate. i think they'll look at that and think that's not what we wanted to project. but at the same time, you can go back to the tape and break it down like a football game, romney had a lot of good points that he got across and i thought from a policy standpoint, i thought it was pretty rich. when people are complaining that this got too much into policy and too deep in the woods, well usually the complaint is there's not enough substance, it's too style oriented. so i think from that standpoint, it was a pretty good debate for the american people to see a lot. the one difference i think was that clearly mitt romney came fired up and ready to go as somebody might say.
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and obama almost looked like george h.w. bush checking his watch. >> i don't think the president's demeanor was especially whatever, checked out, i mean he talked longer than mitt romney so clearly he was engaged. >> i think why the analysis of the debate is the way it is from my perspective is not so much how did the president do? he did fine. there are moments he did really well and there are moments when negotiate did so well. i think the president did fine. he wasn't checking his watch or yawning. i think why last night was important was because how well governor romney performed. and as a political analyst i thought to me -- you know when you watch sports games you can
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tell if a team is running every play for the first half, they're going to try to establish the run. even i can figure that out. i didn't think he was going for like ablet. i thought he was going for what his strength was which was not focused on the economy. this is what i've done, this is what i will do. i'm focusedton economy. and i thought from the moment of the debate it was very clear that's what he was all about. and he executed over the last hour and a half. it's sort of the historic norm if you're a democrat in a presidential election, you run to the left and get your nomination and pivot back to the middle and for romney ran unsuccessfully for the nomination. he had been running to the
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right for four years. and i think it becomes like a conditioned behavior. and i think he was slow making the turn back and heading towards swing voters. and i didn't really see him doing that effectively until his convention speech. and then really really really last night. and last night, it really was the first time this campaign that he struck me like the guy that i saw in 1994 and the guy that ran as governor that he was sort of back close to mitt romney 1.0 as opposed to 2.0 or 3.0 and back to who he is. and i tend to think that people -- when you're not pretending to be somebody else, i think you do a better job.
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and i think this is romney. and i think he's been a long time pretending to be something else and had a hard time getting back to his roots. but i think this is his roots and i wondered whether he could get back there and he did. obviously a strong performance. >> following on the sense -- the wall street journal had an interesting poll yesterday or monday of people indicating they were sort of tired of all this partisan ship stuff and maybe yuan fide government was a way to make things work
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together. and that is what we've been talking about making yourself more appealing to independents. is there any sense in thinking about how one candidate or the other could preach the patism of bipartisanship or is that -- are we kidding ourselves? >> i think you saw some of that from governor romney last night when he talked about his experience in massachusetts where the legislature w 87% democratic yet he worked with thim them every week and aument all the time and managed to get his healthcare plan passed with only two descending votes. so i think you saw some of that from him. in terms of the brooder picture is americans -- and this is not a knock, they generally want
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what they don't have. when one party is in control you tend to have elections like 2006 or 2010 where the party that controls everything gets slapped down. and then when you have what you have now where you have split control where the democrats have 2/3 and the republicans have 1/3 of washington, then people say i think we'll be better with one party control and then they say be careful what you wish for. >> i just have two comments. last night my reaction to the debate was where is the substance mr. romney? is that a good debate just
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throwing around a lot of comments. and i didn't think the spt taking credit for some of the things he's doing. and the second comment i is minority voters are scared of the i.d. i would like to see if you would comment on how you're polling and if you're involved with any of the hispanic leadership about making sure the vote gets out? >> i disagree with the first part. i thought it was a more subs stan tive debate i've seen in a while. and i was watching some of the meters and when romney was going through his five point plan, his numbers went straight up. i thought -- i don't think it was vague, i thought it was a lot of substance.
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>> it was the most substive debate i can remember in terms of plans in a long time. maybe the bar is set so low it's not hard to get over but i was kind of surprised. >> i guess what is substance these days, especially in the modern debate or communications? i guess my summation would be you had a very good sense of these two yes's philosophy and approach to government. and substance will save it for span span. >> i guess my reaction and i say this as someone who was born and raised in louisiana. i don't think there is any significant voter fraud in this country, widespread organized
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voter fraud. i think the bush justice department found 400 individual cases in eight years. that works out to one case per state per veer so that seems to me, fairly light. do i think that a lot of republicans and conservatives -- do i think if you gave them shots and wired them up to a polygraph machine and asked them is there a significant voter fraud problem in this country i think they would say yes and pass that test. i don't think there is but they're convinced of it. but i think there is some tunism taking place out there as well. i'm not sure i want to make a republican consultant get up and say something that will get him in trouble with folks in his party's base. and i know john at "the wall
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street journal" is sort of leading a charge on establishing voter fraud as a major problem. but to me, it's kind of sporadic and a sheriff's race some place is more likely to be stolen than a u.s. senate or house race. >> which race would that be, charlie? let's talk about that. >> i think it's a solution in search of a problem. but i think that a lot of the republican concerns, i think they are very sincere but we just saw from the florida situation, these kind of things happen, it happens on both sides, but i don't think there is a huge problem. but at the same time, in life most of us need i.d.s to go about our daily lives and i think we ought to do something to get official photo i.d.s in
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the hands of voters to help them get through their lives up to and including voting. >> one last and then i'm going to throw a last question to these guys. >> looking back at the 2004 election and the strategy that president bush and his team employed. we know it's going to be a close race. what i see on the ground is the obama campaign planning a lot more than what governor romney's campaign has. when you look at ohio the romney campaign has 30 field offices where the obama has 96 field offices. seems like they were planning for a while it's going to be a
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close race and at the end of the day it comes to the ground game. >> i think our size advantage was since january 2009, president obama knew he was going to be the not knee in 2012 so he could plan for four years. and i think we were all like really happy with the results of 2008, but 2008s don't come every year. that was unique and i think they smartly recognized, they could see four years away, it's going to be a close election and they planned ahead. and i think any campaign from city council to president, you got to do two things, you got to win the message war. that's why debates are important. but you also got to win the
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ground game. and the one thing they could do in the beginning was the ground game. we all know where the battleground states are. and i think one of the great things from 2008 from the democrats perspective was how many new people got engaged. and i think the president obama campaign with the field offices in ohio has done a good job of keeping those people engaged. it's all four years of activity and planning for the 30 day sprint. that's an advantage we have going into election day. >> i'm going to turn to glenn a second just to ecoor word it a little differently than what fred said, i think that the obama campaign, we know they've got the obama campaign has a fabulous ground game. we can't tell yet how good. and the romney effort may be
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great or may not be or may be inbetween, we don't know that. but to ecosomething fred said, the obama campaign has to have a better ground game because of the challenge they have no getting young voters out. i think the african american scommuent motivated where they don't need a lot of the organizational records but with young voters it's a challenge. so t it's essential for the obama campaign to have an aggressive ground game because they were so successful last time. i think they have to. >> i think that's an important point. a couple of obsizations, one is i don't know how good the romney ground game will be. i know it's going to be miles
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ahead of the 2008 ground game from mccain. so from that standpoint it's going to be significantly better. the president -- it wasn't january 2009, he knew he was going to be unopposed when hillary said yes to the secretary of state job. first they had to win a primary and that primary went on for a long time. so that kind of cut into organizational efforts. but i think you're going to see the best republican ground game. i don't know that republicans -- and i agree with charlie. republican motivation is sky high so i don't know that they need quite the same ground game there. to me the romney campaign challenge is more on meeting the message side of things than the turnout. the republican turnout is going
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to be pretty strong this time around. >> we've got five minutes left and what i'd like for glenn and fred is take your campaign strategist hat off and as two really smart guys, really smart students of public opinion who have been in washington for -- >> 25 years. >> yes, looking at after the election and yes there are personalations that happen in the house and senate that are important. but thinking about things that need to happen by december 31 in terms of the fiscal cliff, thinking about thanges may have to happen in terms of revenue, in terms of entitlement cuts, in terms of spending cuts, in terms of the mega challenges facing us between now and december 31 and the first part
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of next year and any grand bargain, what is anything that's top of mind that you think of that is a challenge for either your party or the other guys or just sort of wax on on that for a minute or two each. >> i'll quote a line from a movie it happens every so often, the movie that should have won best picture and did not. the movie that did not win best picture but it should have won best picture and that's "rock ki 3." that's when he was asked right before the fight he says what's your prediction. and he growled into the camera, prediction, pain. there is a lot of things that can happen with the the fiscal
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cliff and the end of the year and everything like that and i don't think that either reed or baner have any idea how it's going to come out muchless mitt romney or obama. i don't pretend to know other than it's going to be a mess i don't think the public has any idea is coming, so i don't think regardless of who wince the election, what happens between now and the end of the year is going to be very traumatic for the country. >> let me refine this and maybe do fred first and then glenn. some kinds doing some things to entitlements and domestic spending, it's pretty inevitable and those are things that a democrat is going to
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have to deal with and thinking about sort of the political consequences of that and on the republican side there's got to be some more revenue and defense is going to take some kind of a hit and that's going to be pretty ugly medicine for republicans. fred, if you were sitting down with harry reed or glenn if you were sitting down with mitch mcconnell and they're about to go in the room and get a lot of blood on their hands and be ankle deep in blood, not to be too vivid, but what would you tell them to be mindful of? >> that's a very good question and i think it's going to be hard to answer it for a lot of reasons.
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one of which is the function of time. the other thing it would be presumptionous of me. >> glenn and i are smart guys and well read, we have good tastes in movies apparently. and we know policy. but look, we're also political people and we're paid to give political advice. so my advice would be don't have people lock me in the room. and we are paid or not paid to sort of point out all the different angles. and i really believer there are times in our country where you're not looking for abcd you're looking for a to z. i'm reading a book on the 1850 compromise and it seemed people listened more.
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and i think -- but putting my political head back on, what i would tell them to be mindful of is -- i'm sure glenn could say this too, talking to people on the phone and in focus groups, i'm always very impressed and feel good as an american that when you get down to it, the american people have common sense. they may not like some medicine like with my kids. now they have new medicines where you put like a sweetener in but they may need the sweetener but fundamentally we all want to do the right thing. but don't have people like us in the room and just bank on the good common sense of the american people. >> i think that this is going
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to be one where nobody is happy with what comes out. you can't be. if it was easy it would have been done by now. that's the reason they kept putting it off is because it's hard. public opinion is going to be moving sharply but if serve unhappy then it's probably a good outcome ft. >> i want to thank fred and glenn, two of the best in the biz. i think we all -- i've learned a lot and have some new thoughts and ideas i got from these guys. this is just sort of routine things for a high quality smart publication like national journal. so thank you all for coming out and see you next time.
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[captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> we asked c-span viewers what they thought about the debate. >> i think mitt romney did a good job of bringing forward his arguments although i do feel like he was rude to president obama and the moderator. >> i think even as a democrat myself mitt romney had some really good points which i think that obama could have been a lot more aggressive in his debate and you don't spend the first 20 seconds of the first presidential debate wishing your wife a happy anniversary. >> i think mitt romney came out and did what he was supposed to do which things were not looking good for him. it was natural for him to come out and be defensive like he
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was. >> i think it was good to see mitt romney become human for so many people but you see a compassionate, extremely welcome pose presidential timber. he is not only well versed but he can hold his own anywhere. and i don't think that's been seen in the last two or three months by most americans. >> i was disappointed by the debate. i think while president obama had instantive points he was me andering and i expected better. but effort governor romney was pressed on what specifically are you going to do, he would say things like and i quote let's just make up a number. i fellly really terrible for the moderator who didn't have control in the debate at any point. i don't know if he needed more
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tools to assert himself. >> i feel that both of the candidates did didn't touch on what is killing america. which is immigration. they did touch on the jobs going over's which is a big factor too. i think that is the big key right there, you have less americans making more money. >> the body language of the candidates was i think romney won that. as far as romney's ideas, he said a lot of stuff about the changes he made to the state. but i think the whole national stage will be a different idea and sometimes that's a little farfetched right now. >> i think it's a draw. they both held their composure. they both made their points. mr. romney did look a little
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frustrated a few times. i liken him to a pit bull on a leash but i think he did make hi his points and i agree with him on values where as the democratic party, i don't agree with their value system at all. >> looking at the body language on these guys, they are full of crap. and they keep avoiding the real issues. >> i just had a reaction tonight, the whole time romney would be talking i kept saying how. he wanted to say how he was going to do all this stuff but he didn't tell us how. it was extremely frustrating. >> obama didn't mention anything about china. he skirted a lot of the questions. he was never direct and to the point and all the trying to attack mitt. mitt seemed confident in his
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actions. when he was attacked on well you don't have details to your plans i believe mitt said it number one, i did this, number two we're doing that, number three, we're doing that. so i think we're going to have very good debate sessions coming up in the future and i hope mitt pulse through. >> i thought both candidates did a good job. i was a little more impressed with the president and because of that i'm getting off the fence and going with the president. i think the moderator could have exercised more control. he kind of let romney cut in and take over more than he should have. i found obama to be more believerable. >> i was okay with what the moderator did. he was flexible and allowed us to see the true personalities of the candidates which is what we need to see. >> the debate wasn't anything special. i felt that romney was being
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redick cue louse constantly disrupting obama but overall not a great debate. >> i think the moderator was disappointing, he didn't roll the debate at all. obama had much more time than romney. i think romney did interrupt a couple of times but he had to because obama had been on for five minutes. i timed it myself. >> two more presidential debates, first a town hall on tuesday october 16 in new york and the final debate which is october 22 in florida focused on foreign policy. >> this month as the presidential candidates meet for debate we're asking high school students to send a message to the president as a
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competition. in a short video students will answer the question what is the most important issue the president should consider in 2013. there is $50,000 in prices available. for complete details go online to scuentcam.org. >> in more whitehouse coverage mitt romney and paul ryan campaigning in virginia. we'll have live coverage at 6: 5. next up a decision on campaign finances and super pacs in the race. you'll here from representatives of the american cross roads political action groups and a student audience here. this is about an hour and a
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half. >> good evening. we're here and it'sit is my greo introduce you to this evening's special event. this is just one of many exciting events that we have planned for this fall and i would encourage all of you -- i know many of you are students in the class -- but there are others of you here, to pick up the fire with details about other upcoming programs. in particular, i want to mention on monday october 15, we will presenting nbc political director chuck todd. there is still time to sign up for that event, and of course, for the others. to not forget to grab a flier. some of you may not realize that
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you are actually attending a session of a course. of course is called political campaigning. that has been taught at the eagleton institute of politics for more than two decades and has always been taught by a bipartisan team of political practitioners in collaboration with a scholar with a political scientist. the course is a perfect example for us of what the institute itself is aimed at. we aim, for more than half century now, at enriching the cent -- study of politics by linking it to the world of political practice,the course cg students with people whose everyday lives and work were all around politics, government, and policy making. and what a year is for politics. i do not think i need to tell you that. in this intense and combative election year, there is the
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usual interest in the candidates and in important issues facing the country, but now, and additional focus on the political process as it unfolds in a world of unprecedented technology and unprecedented amounts of money, especially in the wake of the supreme court's citizens united decision, election year 2012 is awash in money, nearly drowning in what the late california political leader, who many years ago used to teach at the eagleton institute, he described it as, money, the mother's milk of politics. sometimes, we may need to change the diet.
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the political campaigning course that you have joined for tonight is remarkable in several ways. it received the highest possible scores for students satisfaction, making it one of the top rated courses here in new brunswick. the credit for that ranking post to the instructors, maggie moran, seated at the right of the chairs, might do hame, at the other end. they work with the system research professor dave anderson. maggie is a douglass college alumni, a regular at eagleton, since an before graduation, a widely admired and sought after democratic strategist. mike is also a record graduate, alumnus, who, as a matter of fact, to this very political campaigning course himself as an undergraduate. he describes himself as not an outstanding student. i will leave you to judge where he has gone from there. today, mike is a nationally
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prominent and highly respected republican strategist. mike and maggie took over the course from its previous longtime instructors in 2009, and since then, have distinguished themselves with their extraordinary knowledge, theier wit and civility, especially notable because of their opposite stance is that the partisan spectrum. and we decided to offer a public program highlighting the influence of money in the 2012 elections, we turn to mike and maggie, knowing they would keep the discussion both informative and lively, but with a minimum of bloodshed. tonight, they are joined by two experts working at the epicenter
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of political money, one of them, and jonathan collegio has wreckers credentials, having graduated in 2001 from our eagleton fellowship program. the other, and jeffrey pollack, does not have any record highs, but we will not hold that against him. i understand he does have some new jersey ties. i look forward to an enlightening conversationmaggiet an extremely important topic and i am delighted to turn the program over to mike do hame -- du haime and maggie moran. [applause] >> good evening to everyone out there, to our students for coming over tonight in some pretty intense weather. i want to mention one thing about mike. he has great judgment. he might be surprised to hear me say that, but he merited democrat. in the most important stations, he has made the right one, right? i want to introduce the guest and i invited tonight, jeffrey pollack. he is sought out by governors and presidents alike, political parties, he is sought out by
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corporations, is the founder of global strategy group, a tremendous public affairs firm located in the city. he is a tremendous professional who has done a remarkable job in this business of making sure that messages are compelling. one other plug for jeff, and i think this is an important professional development. jeff is going to be in a movie next year. he will be in a movie with brad cooper, ryan gosling, and eva mendes. as he develops this new celebrity aspect of his resume, i just wanted to give a warm welcome to him. thank you for coming down tonight. [applause] >> we are at the ground floor of your movie career. the end of your political career, the beginning of your movie career. >> thank you everyone for coming. one note, our class is usually
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off the record. tonight, it is clearly on the record. this is different for our class, so we would try to give ourselves. jonathan collegio is here on the republican side. he is one of the most foremost communication professionals in the world of politics and beyond. right now he is the director of communications for american crossroads, the largest outside group playing in the political world. he was also the director of digital television for the national association of broadcasters. he and i worked in the same building in the last decade where he was the press secretary of the and rcc see, deputy of staff to patrick mchenry -- nrcc, deputy of staff to patrick henry. thank you for coming. [applause] >> i would just try to set the stage. we are going to have some q&a
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tonight and we are good ask our guest to talk about their products that they are working. as we always tried to do in the class, we tried to use the current election going on as the case study for the class. the overview tonight is about money and politics. this has been a very different year with money and politics with citizens united opening the door for a lot more outside money coming into the political spectrum. what we want to talk about tonight is what that means, in an academic spotlight, has campaign finance reform affected campaigns and outside groups, and how is it affecting this election? there is an awful lot happening in down ballots as well. this is not entirely new. while it is certainly different this year, this is not the first time there has been outside money. it was not like in 2008, 2010, or 2004. there have always been outside groups, but certainly in the
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recent history, there have been organizations that are outside of a campaign structure, outside of the campaign finance limits, but can advocate for the election or defeat of candidates as long as they conform to certain rules. different party committees have different expenditure units. ofeach side can have their own independent expenditures, as well as groups outside, completely unattached to the candidates. now with citizens united, you have supertax, pacs dedicated to one candidate. it can happen at a presidential level, said that level, congressional, you name it. this is really the first year they have been tremendously involved. in my opinion, it had a dramatic effect on the republican primary, in terms of extending it, but that was the first time it happened. a lot of people are watching with the dead men are doing and try to figure it out because there is no playbook. it is the first time there has been that the change happening from the side of things.
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we are going to talk a lot about campaign finance reforms and issues and i want to hear everyone's opinions and questions. we was that the stage by letting each talk about the products they are working on this year, and then we will start the discussion. >> jeff, he wanted to start with you. act as if this at the entire room has no familiarity with these kinds of vehicles. give us a sense of the pro-obama perris pacs, how did they come together, how do they get funded, what is the mission of priorities usa, and what is the sense of the message, strategy, and planning that goes on, what kind of value it adds, or does not come into the political spectrum? >> thank you for having me. it is a pleasure to be here and talk. i wish i could say it is a pleasure to talk about the role of supertax in the elections, is not. the supreme court made a strange decision that has allowed these
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entities to exist. unfortunately, that has led to this escalation of these super pacs. it is not just in the presidential. in random congressional races you have super pacs where one or two donors are putting a couple million dollars into an organization in order to try to influence the election, and that has never happened before in that kind of way. that is the historic point. as many of you may know, president obama, of course, had a strong opinion that this was wrong, a strong opinion about campaign finance, the need for campaign finance, and he did not like the super pacs. for a long time, there was no
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presidential blessing for a super pac to exist. we were actually to the game appeared priorities usa action, the super pac supporting barack obama, a link to form and like to get started, and the late to raise money, more importantly. it was started by two gentlemen, john sweeney and bill burton, who had come out of the white house, bill with a communications job, seajohn serd as chief of staff to rahm emanuel. was no presidential blessing for a super pac to exist. we were actually to the game appeared priorities usa action, the two of them had left the white house reelected, and it sd
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off slow. reyes -- the way to raise money is to go to donors who you might think will help the president, people that have donated before, people that have shown an interest in trying to help the president. it is a very different fundraising strategy. i am not a fundraiser, but for -- if he think about barack obama, the power of his campaign, reelected, and it stad off slow. reyes -- the way to raise money is to go to donors who you might think will help the president, people that have donated before, people that have shown an interest in trying to help the president. it is a very different fundraising strategy. i am not a fundraiser, but for -- if he think about barack obama, the power of his campaign, what we know is, how much of that was fuelled by little donations? by people in this room sending $5, $3? the enthusiasm of small donors. you cannot do that if you are a super pac. you're spending your time going out and raising six figures, seven bigger checks. please keep me mlion dollars. that is a hard thing for me to ask for. it is not a common thing. can i have $250 for some charity? yes. $1 million? that is a tough conversation. so that is the way that it happens. in terms of the beginning and how it has grown a beard since then, priorities usa has become very successful in terms of raising money. more importantly, priorities has been an to start this superpac and begin the process of trying to help barack obama get important part of setting the agenda, in part for the presidential campaign. i will show you an ad that we did that i think has a lot of influence, the subjects had a
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lot of influence. if we could call up the ads. i want to show you an ad that priorities put together. it will be the one on the left. not that one. as maggie said -- if you could hold it for one second -- as maggie said, i served as one of the pollsters for perris usa. i knew the polling and research along with the talented geoff garin. two of us do our polling for our respective firms. my firm also serves as a digital advertising, meaning that we advertise on the internet. my firm is helping to serve up to all of you.
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this ad is an interesting one. in the research, what we found was -- i wish we could say we found it. newt gingrich founded out. he ran a campaign against mitt romney about mitt romney's record on bain capital, on his job and performance, and how he made his money. newt gingrich a salted mitt romney with stuff. not only him, but with the help of one of these super pacs funded by a man named sheldon adelson, not a nice man. >> speak for yourself. >> he was not a nice man to mitt romney, as you recall. they actually had a 30-minute ad? in the beginning, there was an ad about bain capital on the internet? the point is, some republicans have attacked mitt romney on his record. what we found in the research was it was an important part of
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the store to talk about how mitt romney had made his money. it was an important table setting point. it is not that anyone has anything against mitt romney for being rich, but we all make our choices in terms of how we make our money. this is one of the ads, probably the most powerful one that we have done. other consultants have talked about this, saying it is very powerful. >> not knowing what it is for. just days later, all three shifts were told to assemble into a warehouse. a group of people walked out on that stage and told us that the plant is now closed and all of you are fired. i looked both ways, i looked at the crowd, and we just all lost
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our jobs. we do not have an income. mitt romney made over $100 million by shutting down our plant and devastated our lives. it turns out, when we built that stage, it was like building my own coffin, and it just made me sick. >> out of the blue one day, we were told to build -- >> pretty powerful ad, a powerful because it is a real story, powerful because it sets the table in terms of what mitt romney's priorities were appear from additional perspective, this ad was seen -- unique visitors -- 2 million times on youtube. most impressively, it was seen in the swing states. so this is the kind of advertising that we decided to run in swing states, particularly like in ohio, for
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example, where blue-collar, downscale voters were looking for this kind of information and saw the kind of priorities of mitt romney. i think this was very important at setting the stage for the rest of the campaign. i will show you one more ad and then i promise to shut up. it is not all nasty and negative. some of it was fun. here is one that we did leading up to the olympics. >> there is mitt romney, who ran the salt lake city games, waving to china, home to a billion people. thousands 0 their job to mitt romney. india, whichrest of the campaig. also gained jobs thanks to romney, and outsourcing pioneer. and burma. we know the swiss have a special place and mitt romney's wallet. he gave millions to swiss banks.
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they sure know how to keep a secret. speaking of secret, bermuda. home to a secret corporation set up by romney. no one knows why, and romney will not tell. and the cayman islands, where romney keeps millions to avoid taxes. you have to say this about mitt romney, he sure knows how to go for the gold, for himself. >> the u.s. olympic committee was not happy about that when it, as you might expect. that ad was a little short lived, but it got a lot of coverage, a lot of views on the internet. kudos to paul, one of the lead advisors to priorities, who came up with the idea of that ad and the great production.
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it is a lot of fun to do what we do for a living. priorities has been a great experience. as money has flowed into the super pacs in general, i think we have played an important role in this campaign, not the kind of outsized role that my colleague does at a crossroads. >> there is a little bit of a difference here. maybe you can explain. jonathan works for crossroads, not a super pac for romney, which there is one. american crossroads has spent more money and has been around much longer. maybe you could talk about the decision to do that. you came out much earlier and saw what was going to happen before it happened. talk about the beginning of that.
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obviously, there was no presidential candidate on the republican side when you started. the role that crossroad place to the president and beyond? >> i can go even beyond to 2010. you have to go back to 2002. previous to the campaign finance reform act of 2002, most of the outside money talk about what through political parties. you could solicit a million- dollar contribution from a corporation or labor union, or a wealthy individual, and they could give it to you, it would be disclosed, and then you could spend the way you wanted. congress decided that was not a good idea and capped the amount you could get from individuals, but not from these outside groups. the idea that anyone of you want to put an ad on the air to talk about what you believe it, that is protected by the first amendment. this is where it gets interesting. people think it is a center- right thing. all the super pacs. it was actually developed on the left.
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in 2004, during the re-election to president bush, three left- wing billionaires, and george soros, peter bing, and another, raise the money to defeat president bush through a series of organizations that try to defeat president bush. this structure had been around for a long time. another thing that had gone on for even longer was the labor unions participation in the political process. what you find is in the election after election, it is the biggest spending outside group, these labor unions. when karl rove and ed gillespie started to look at the 2010 elections, they realize that while big labor -- which spent $4 million helping to elect president obama in 2008 -- there was no corollary to that that existed on the right to be able to spend large amounts of money on candidates running for the house and senate. so they smartly started american crossroads. we set a goal of $50 million in
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2010. i was working at a crossroads when president obama actually attacked crossroads and said we were taking illegal money with -- from china, which is funny. as soon as he said that, we saw an uptick in donations. the reason, president obama identified us as the biggest threat to his position. we ended up shattering our fund- raising goals, raising $75 million in the 2010 elections. that is where we are. we are a counterbalance to what the left has done very efficiently for decades.
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in 2010, people think of the crossroads group as being the biggest spenders in the 2010 election, but we were not. the largest group of expenditures or by the bureaucrats union, the american federation of states, county and miscible employees, labor unions at the state capitals. the second biggest spending group was the chamber groups, and a crossroads. rounding out the top five were seiu, and the national education association, everybody's favorite teachers union. three of the top five spending groups were not super pacs but labor unions. one of the differences you see in 2010, people think of the crossroads group as being the biggest spenders in the 2010 election, but we were not. the largest group of expenditures or by the between labor unions and super pacs, labor union disclosed -- super pacs disclose a lot of other things but labor unions do not appear they are able to spend more money that is not visible to the political process. >> and with that, we will have a counterpoint. but for the sake of time. >> "the wall street journal" showed in a piece in july that big labor had spent $4.4 billion between 2007 and 2011 impacting the process at the state, federal, and local level. there is a lot of money in
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politics but people did not talk about where most of the money is coming from, the labor unions. we have a spot to show. american crossroads is very active in the presidential election. this is a spot that we launched today in eight states, $12 million. pacs,>> this is what president obama's said the jobless rate would be if we passed the stimulus, 5.6%, but this is where the jobless rate actually is, 8.1%. the difference? about 3.7 million jobs. drove us $5ding trillion deeper into debt, and now we have fewer jobs than when he started. but obama promised -- what obama promised, compared to what he delivered. >> this holds the president
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account to a big promise that he made. remember talking about the stimulus. the president had a plan to fix it. $800 billion on all kinds of different things to fix the economy. they spent the money and the johnson not fall but we got that. we found from our research, when you talk about it in that terms, here is what the president sold to the american people on the economy. not only did not create the jobs, it created a lot of debt. spent a lot of money, not a lot of results. that is our messaging. we tried to hold elected officials to their record and also for the promises they have made. that is why a lot of politicians do not like super pacs. >> one of the things that we talk about in this class is targeting. living here, between the york and philadelphia, you will not see many of these. potentially, pennsylvania has been a target state. right now, neither side is
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concentrating too hard. it is important to remember, there is a lot of money concentrated to a small number of states, and ultimately, a small number of people in those states. that is a port for everyone to remember. the important point of campaign finances and the unintended consequences, students in the class now that is one of my pet peeves. unintended consequences of well- intentioned legislation. we are going to open up to some questions, give maggie a chance to respond. i do not want to become the moderator here. we would love for the students to ask questions first. then anyone feel free as well. the microphones are there. if you want to be on c-span, -- do not say hello to people -- but you can tell people when it will be on. questions about campaign finance
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reform, presidential races, any other race, where they've had input from outside groups. >> just a couple of points. one of the things that is fascinating to me when folks discuss this issue, they often talk about the role of the unions and labor. what is interesting about organized labor, they have been under a series of rules for years, especially under the federal department of labor, and those are gone more strict. if you are a rank-and-file member of the union, you have an opt out dues checkoff to allow some of your money be used for political purposes. when i go to the store to buy a soda, i did not sign on to whatever company is selling the that soda's political agenda. i did not choose that. so how the company makes revenue and then takes that money and is putting it into an agenda, and correcting the political process potentially with a massive influence of wealthy dollars coming from large-scale corporations, is not the
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comparison you can make to unions, per se, in terms of how they found traditional political activity. unions can now spend political money out of any of their accounts, but they have to report for it, and they do so extensively with the federal department of labour. we were talking about this earlier, who is winning this money race? could you look at the numbers? >> this is from "the washington post." you can take anything you want. if you put that picture, you can see. look up top. right there, that tells you the amount of spending that has been done. american crossroads, 59, restore our future, 41, americans for prosperity, 36. those are the top three, all those republican. then you have the 22.7 for the dnc, 21.8 for the rnc, 17.5 for
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the rnc mitt romney committee. four of those five are republican entities. barack obama has had a lot of money, too. i am not trying to blow past that. obviously, the obama campaign has had a tremendous amount of money. when you lookwhen you look at t, it is very clear republicans have dominated. we store our future has spent $87 million. $87 million. crossroads, 30 voted overall. after that, " provost. these are massive amounts of money and the cycle. i just think it is what it is. it is a reality we are dealing with. it is why we are here today to talk about in the very difficult thing for campaigns to deal with. >> an important point to make,
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when looking at the practical matter of the campaign, president obama campaign is outspending pretty significantly mayor ronnie on television. with the outside groups, if you aggregate the president's and groups on the left, it is mitt romney side that has heavier weight on television. it is relatively close, but it is an aggregate that side. campaign finance reform. this used to be the party committee. you used to be able to do this. that is important to note. basically the entities that are most accountable for the voters are the candidates themselves. they have to say i authorize this. they are the people that are voted on. the next layer out would be the party committees. they are actually held to account. they are closest thing to thbeig
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held accountable. what you saw it they figured that out in terms of the party committee side. the figure that out right away. -- they figured that out right away wh. what they did is putting money outside of the candidates. the share of the spending by the candidates in the past was basically closer to 50/50. not the first time. >> are you jealous and better? to comitter? then you have a party convention during bit independent ads. which i think still is an unintended consequence. what you have is to start squeezing the amount of money spent by candidates.
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i europe outside group. what is happening, rather than each canada tried to get 50 percent of what is set on the air, each is getting 20% on the air. probably even less. if you are being outspent by the opponent, you may be down to 10 percent. it really has taken -- the people that are most important process and made them less and less relevant, and certainly less and less advocates on our own behalf. outside group becomes an arms race. both outside groups are an arms race. both groups are right. if we did anything else, it would be malpractice on our side. this is in many ways the outgrowth. >> if you are an average voter in seat and advertisement, the canada has to on the message. if you're going to a large scale of the group you do not even
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know how it got funded for wind up attack advertisements, how does the boater distinguish between what could be advocate -- what could be accurate and not accurate? who is the special interests dominating the message. coming out, and how did they get through it? one of the most amazing things happening right now when you look of the president's numbers, he is doing quite well. what is fascinating about the amount of money spent, is that for some reason that message is not cutting through. it is not compelling. if you look of the swing states that we that record to be remarkably close, we are trending towards obama in the way that everyone things unless we reset the presidential election, it is quite clear the president is headed towards creating an environment where he has a significant advantage. >> mitt romney will be so exceptionable tomorrow there
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will be a seismic shift. >> tune in. talk about next week in class. >> you engage in more localized races, congressional and senate, a bit about how you choose rarities said to have a broader >> that is a big question. we are clearly focused on the presidential election. the goal is to defeat president obama and elect a new president of heavily invested in the senate and house races. we are focused on all of them. the senate races is where you will see more of the advertising earlier on, because the bigger the office, the more people pay attention earlier. we will be engaged in a number of house races probably later on as we get closer. >> that is the other thing, a crossroads places outside role
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in the senate races. do not think that these are not inclinentwined. even if there was parity, the republican side, a crossroads and others, our way out spending on the senate races in house races. those all have an impact, because it is the environment. how do people feel when there are millions of dollars in advertisement spending in the state of montana for example on the senate race. it affects the house race and other races. that is one of the unintended consequences, but certainly a consequence of super pak spending like this. when the campaigns, and i work for far more campaigns than independent expenditures, when we deal with campaigns what we always talk about is when is
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crossroads going to come up? one is crossroads' going to be there? half of our planning and discussion is about what the outside entities are going to do. we use to just plan on the other side in terms of campaign. we used to have pure corn to do, they are board to do. we are now planning for a multi- level chess game, which makes the job more fun. to go there are a number of them. there are supertax that cropped up in senate races. -- >> there are a number of them. biggest outside spender in house races is the democratic house majority pack. >> i believe today. you said you guys have not started. largely have not started. i do not think that will be at the end of the day. the senate races for sure you
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have been a monster play here. to go the other thing important to realize is there are very specific rules everyone has to provide -- has to abide by. everyone takes these roles very seriously. it is interesting to watch. there is a lot more players involved in this. having to live by the rules that make independent expenditures truly independent something that is important for everyone to remember. all sides are trying to look at this. after the 2004 election i appealed on a panel that was a field organizer for an outside group that was doing field organizing, and they lamented the field organizing was done by the republican side and outside groups of republican side, and they legally could not communicate with the campaign, and there were not able to do that. in their mind the campaign was not doing the right thing. everyone follows these rules
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well. anyone have any questions? any students? you have to come down for the microphone. go to the microphone. >> please try to keep the questions as concise as possible. >> do not cursed. to go first of all, thank you for being here. -- >> first of all, thank you for being here. >> corporations are people, did n't you hear? >> i am really interested in international relations and international corporations that are stationed in the united states. has there ever been international corporations that has funded the super packs and has there been prone nations that have been fighting for a particular candidates, like say a separate nation?
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>> two parts. ] i do not know corporations are giving to supertax. if you were to look at super packed into corporate entities, there is money going into them, but not as much as you might guess. i do not know citizens united has quite the degree of impact. i would recommend a piece by that timatt thye. it is a good piece in worth reading. the second thing is we do not take money from foreign entities as plainly stated in the literature. >> no money from foreign nationals. >> a quick question. we were talking about how it has changed. at the same time, it has created jobs for you guys. a little more honest about that.
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would you be in favor of getting rid of this super pak, and what would you favor in response to it? >> the one thing about campaign finance reform is it is always evolving. let's assume a new set of laws attack. as quickly as their past, election lawyers figure out how to get around them. it is remarkable. it is a constantly evolving issue. when i support moving it back? absolutely. i think there has to be a mechanism that might work for millionaire politicians. i believe there should be a mechanism for rank and file,, should you be opposing someone who is self-funding to be able to raise larger amounts. i believe putting more money back creates more accountability and much more integrity-driven process in terms of the issues of the election. personally, yes. this time -- is my firm make
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money off of these campaigns? absolutely. i think it is better for the country if we went back to those models. agreeo not as necessarily with the assumption of the question. look at what super pacts actually do and what the advertisement does. remember the question in political science 101, should be elected representative do what he believes is right or with a constituent thinks is right? you could give to the question one way or another. the important thing to take away from that is there is tension between the elected representative wants to do and what the constituent wants to do. no one wants to run from office so they can cast a lever from what the constituents to do. you want to be a candidate because you believe in something. nobody wants to just pull the lever for what the constituents want to do. all a super pak really can do is
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identify places where the election representative has gone out too far from the constituency and educate the electorate about how the elected representative is sideways with the public opinion of the people. take that advertisements the crossroads ran and were running in the states talking about how the president passed a stimulus program. the stimulus was widely -- wildly unpopular. all they can do is hold the president or another elected official and account for what they did. it cannot change public opinion about stimulus legislation but can identify places were an elected representative is sideways with a constituent and let people know about it. i do not know that i agree with the premise of the question, because it brings to light a lot of things other people may not know. >> i think there should be full disclosure. if you allow that to flow into
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the candidates, it would allow underfunding candidates. if you were to waive all want, if you were to get rid of limits and allow people to contribute as much as they want, as long it was immediately disclosed, the press and the product could say that has had an undue influence on the elected official. >> also, you have to look of the way candidates raise money. they are raised through traditional pacts, the union pacs that exist in washington. mostly to incumbents. we look at traditional tax giving in 2010. democrats held large majorities in 2010. traditional pacts, which are mostly corporate tax, get to the democrats at a proportion of 57% to democrats. 43 percent republicans. they do not care if they're republicans or democrats but the
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care they are incumbents. it is almost like the game is very tilted against anyone who wants to try to crack into the process. paks are not liked by incumbents because they can hold them accountable. the incumbent does not like that. traditional pad willkls rescript to the always give them incumbent. >> i would still rather have the opponent pointing that out. i would rather the two sides of the campaign of battle thenat out than a superpak. disclosure certainly is one thing. there are multiple solutions. to me, it is frustrating the candidates boys has been muted. the presidential campaign is a whole different thing in terms
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of money and the impact of media on it. on the senate race in house races, i just want these two men, to ladies to talk to one another and fight it out between each other. i think we would probably get more vision contrast, but it would be like here is what i think, here is what she thinks. >> this is an opinion, but i think advertising matters of less because people are watching the presidential race. when you get down to the u.s. senate races, it is very difficult for either candidate to have any money to spend on advertising. it does become much harder for candidates to get their voices heard. on the president to raise, you have earned media coverage every day. we do not see that in our state. even in the governor's race
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until the end. >> we have a lot of independent expenditure money not spent on television, because it is so expensive in new york. there are a ton of deal programs, phone programs, digital programs where you can really change outcomes. i think that happened and was evidenced by the race between the congressman where there was the democratic primary. pascrill won by a variety of entities that change the dynamics of the situation of the race. that was not even the intention of the field program, but i had a huge impact. the costs are so prohibitive in new jersey that other mechanisms are being used. why do we go to the microphone-- don't we go to the microphone? >> do you believe corporations,
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as people or not? ." there are legal reasons why the account corporations. it is beyond my expertise to have an opinion on that. >> we are all under the same rules that the supreme court pass down. >> 47% of the people are not to oneelevant according candidates. >> i even heard mitt romney say this. this is a guy on the 47%, he gives for plus million dollars of his own money to charity last year. he gives millions and millions of dollars. it is preposterous to say someone who gives millions and millions of dollars to charity does not care -- >> we did not say it. the problem about that quote is two things.
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it says the mitt romney you see on the debate or in a tv advertisement saying one thing, but the mitt romney behind closed doors is saying something entirely different. >> depends on the day. the 47% goes to the important point, it proves your point, there has not been, a small media in terms of amount of dollars spent, the amount of voters nationwide know about this because of the coverage in the presidential race is remarkable. there were a whole bunch of surveys that tested whether or not people heard about a 47% in the swing states. the numbers were astronomically high. that is the thing. i do think that comment was emblematic of what people had already built in in their
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feelings. if you had any uncertainty that mitt romney is not like me, does not get me or the middle class, that's one cam -- that one comment encapsulated it all. >> he was talking like a political strategist. >> he wasn't. that was a lame excuse. if see also 47 percent of the people are not voting for me because they are not voting for barack obama. that would be fine, but that is not what he said. he went much further than that, and a simple dismissing of there is 45% on one side 45% on the other. we have all said that. that is not what he said. he said the do not pay -- the people who do not pay taxes are irelevant. >> he did not say that either. your taking liberties on that -- you're taking liberties on that.
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>> i am a grad student and member of one of those evil unions. i thought i should say that. i wanted to make it clear. my question is a bit towards the republican strategist, because i am surrounded by people who have the same ideas as me. i have been following the recent voter i.d. laws. there is a linkage with the super pacs, because you're seeing people funding these but also the initiative to get these voter i.d. laws passed. my question is twofold. is this pretty blatant -- this is what republican leaders are saying, attempt up boater disenfranchisement and explicit strategy of the republicans that is emerging as something that we're going to see in future elections? just to challenge you, how do want certain people to vote. you justify it? i do not understand how you can
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>> i will take that. justify that. >> i do not know they are saying i do not know anyone has said that. i will give my response here is that. >> they are saying they do not what happens. i have seen firsthand the voter fraud. it is probably not as rampant as a lot of people would have you believe, just like the threats on republicans tried to disenfranchise people as what you are trying to see. what you have here is a tug between both sides, and both sides think the other side is doing some good wrong. i have witnessed it. i have watched people casting illegal votes and physically tried to stop it. that does not meean every democrat does occur. if you pretend it is not happening, you are only hurting yourself. you could argue yourself whether that is the right remedy, but is this a very difficult tug between both sides in terms of how you stop that. >> that is absurd. if you want to stop fraud, do
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that. but to decide the only way you could win an election is to disenfranchise people's right to vote, that is pretty embarrassing. there is a whole series of things that are completely at regis. the only way you will get there and get the win is by disenfranchising a series of voters, i think that it's a terribly sad state. >> we do not have that here. that is not the intent. >> the intent is to stop people from voting, stop people from voting. it is a problem. the city of brotherly love, in the city of philadelphia where everything is run by the city and the judge of elections ends up becoming the democratic city people, and what used to be the case were polling locations were literally in people's garages, you had no accountability.
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you have no one watching the election. you can complain that someone is trying to -- what you have is no accountability in a number of places in this country. you are trying both sides. what you are saying is not that easy. >> i agree it is not easy. >> if both sides are right. there is some fraud. >> my side is more right. [laughter] >> there is certainly the tactics that they are choosing seem to be important. a modified poll tax, which is what some of this is, is not the right way to go. pennsylvania i believe was stopped. it is the wrong tactic, and i hope they change it. frankly, none of us think voter suppression is the way to go. it is not the way to win elections. i am positive jonathan does not spend time thinking about how
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they can suppress boaters. that solution, the solution of voter id is wrong. >> i would all for to thank you coming here. i would like to read q uotuote n this issues. . we've seen unprecedented amounts of campaign spending, often by groups that will not disclose their identity. it seems to be like if your argument is money is free speech, we should hold people accountable for what they say. if the ceo of pepsi were to give $1 billion to mayor ron be tomorrow, i would not buy pepsi for the rest of the year. how were we going to hold them accountable? >> just a year? [laughter] >> there are certain soda's i cannot go without.
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>> not in new york city. it has to be 16 ounces. no more than that. >> how can we hold these people accountable if we do not know what they are saying? take of this election cycle there are a lot of different groups that are organized differently under the tax laws. all of those reports to the fcc and the reports are quarterly and dispose -- disclose the donors. there are also non-profit organizations, all whole host of them, better organized under different parts of the tax code. they are private organizations that are not required to disclose members or donors. this is the type of tax law that is protected going back to the 1950's. there is a whole logic behind it. it is not done by the right or left but all types of these
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organizations. 137,000 of them. environmental groups are organized the same way were they do not disclose donors. the irs has issued if you are a political -- non-profit organization, you are allowed to onnd some of your recent resous political activity. it cannot be the majority, but it can be some of what you do. they are following the laws that exist to cover non-profit groups. >> there is an investigation are ride -- already by the new york attorney general and to some of this and to whether this kind of spending, whether it is all kosher. the kind of money that is being spent and is not right. johnson described it perfectly well. it is true, there is something remarkable that republicans forever and ever were about disclose, disclose, and now we cannot get this closed at passed
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in the senate because of the republicans in the house. boaters the kinds of things that i think are frustrating. -- those are the kinds of things that i think are frustrating. >> is that the first place we were looking for bipartisanship over the years? >> the one. president obama was going to reach across-- the one point president obama was quick to reach across the aisle. >> why you do anything anonymous? you do not want to be caught. there could be a variety of reasons for that, but takes away a remarkable amount of accountability in the system. you have no sense of where it is coming from, why is there, what their motives are, what is happening behind the curtain. >> a lot of the questions that come from that angle are the same people who advocate the most for campaign finance reform, advocate the most for what are very restricted
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campaign finance laws. that is what i mean about the unintended consequences. the entities you -- these guys work for have to disclose, but there are other groups out there that live under different rules and have to abide by different rules in terms of how they communicate. >> i believe the amount candidates can raise from individuals, is it the same that it was in 1978? it is up a little bit. back in the 1970's people were able to get $2,000. now they can get $2,400. over a lifetime, it's still has not changed very much. >> with the advent of all the spending by the political groups, do you think we have seen the end of publicly- financed campaigns? what reforms the of think might happen in the area of campaign finance in the next few years? >> i do not think we of seen the end.
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>> in new york city where i >> or union with the check box. -- oh, you mean with the check box. >> senator mccain of did it with that. he was dramatically outspent. it was not a good decision in terms of what it meant. he was dramatically outspent. no one will do that ever again unless things change dramatically. you know what are you talking about. >> in new jersey, we have matching funds. we have a program at the legislative level.
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their massive funds in new jersey that we raise to a certain threshold. the state will match you 2-1. it makes it candidate -- you could become viable very quick. you saw that in the primary in 2009. even in that general election, christie had $11 million, which is more than what other campaigns debt. it is very clear. that gets to the point of being enough to get your message out. in philadelphia and new york's, you really need to it in the neighborhood of $10 million. in new jersey, a public financing gives candidates the ability to get to that threshold level.
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it remains to be seen going forward. we do not have it on the legislative level. >> that canada does not have to spend -- i cannot tell you how much we spend time fundraising. it is massive. when he first retired, the reason was because he would have had to raise $12 million. look at his schedule for the new year in which he would be running. he spent 60% of his time outside of the u.s. senate. for him, it got to the point where it was remarkably daunting to him and in his mind, inappropriate, and so he would not do it. it is terrific to have a public match in have that level of engagement were the candidate is out with the voters were often instead of fundraisers all the time.
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>> both president obama and governor romney you see them spending time in the states because there is this ongoing race. you cannot fall behind. you have to do the same at jacksonville. you have to be there. do i have enough money on tv bursas going out and shaking hands with people and getting media coverage in the target states? -- do i have enough money on tv advertisements going out and shaking hands with people and getting media coverage in the target states? >> you mentioned the foundation of some of the right-wing pacs. i am curious if you would still consider yourselves at a disadvantage in the union money coming in from the left. is the playing field level now that the money has trickle-down
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to congressional races? do you think we will see any of the senatewing pacs in races? or do you think this is something that is reserved for the presidential election? >> we have them in separate categories going forward. >> there is an allegation. -- allocation. >> i do know from the associated press that a few months ago there was a report of the union outspending $450 million, i cannot remember the exact number. i would expected to come up in that range. in terms of what they spend, i think we will know that in the middle of next year.
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>> it is pretty cheap, by the way. between three people -- i do not think it will be -- i think it will be very clear. there is a lot of activity on the left in terms of the super pacs and in the house races. there is a house majority pack. los two entities are actively funding their own set -- those two entities are actively fundraisers their own set. it look like it would be a tough election. todd aiken opened his mouth. there is plenty of activity on that race and in the other race. i work for a guy in indiana.
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indiana is supposed to be a republican state. there is no way a democrat can compete for the u.s. senate. but then a guy came in and beat dick lugar in a primary. the democratic side has a lot of money in as well. if you look and go to indiana -- montana, you cannot watch tv without seeing a nonstop advertising. so, we have plenty of room on our side. >> hello. thank you for coming. i want to ask this question for jonathan. thank you for coming. i think everyone here would agree that democracy -- if we
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have so much money and so little people, the think that undermines democracy? as a volunteer, i can work there a whole year. $1 million is more than all i can do for a campaign. how do you think that says about us as a democracy? >> you have to look at what the alternative is. i do not know if you want to be in a situation where you have a government that is determining whether someone who wants to put ideas up on television can do that. that is a thing with campaign finance. the campaign finance system might not look perfect, but when
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you look at what the alternatives are, i do not think they are very good either. i do not know if it is good to have the department of justice determining whether someone wants to run television ads. i think that is a fundamental right. when you start infringing on the fundamental right, i think that is when things begin to get ugly. >> even on our side. we can go back to george washington. of our stores are -- there are stories about the voice of god ringing about how they got the vote. i do not think either side believes that the money itself is necessarily evil. it is about disclosure. it is about how these things are funded. if someone wants to put up an
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advertisement, free speech, put in an advertisement. tell us who you are and what you are saying. that is a different role than what we are living in today. i am in one of the super pacs. we're not going to it unilaterally disarm, but there has to be better ways than this. >> thank you for your question. >> hello. thank you for coming. i have a second question. both democratic and republican politicians have publicly spoken out against the existence of packs and super pacs. they say that a corrupt our democratic system. what do you believe on this issue? >> i believe that the supreme court errored. the outgrowth of all of this is not necessarily great. i think there has to be a better
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way. i think the first thing that you have heard talk about is a the disclosed act. it came from the democratic side with no republican support in terms of having disclosure so that we know what is going on. i think we would be better off. our democracy is strong. let's be clear. we are ok. we are not buying based on that. there is no question we still have some tweaking to do. it was all about the 2004's or 2006's. something new will always come around. >> i have tremendous faith in the voters. i have tremendous faith in the
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voters who sit and watch the ads and can sifted out and figure it out. it is the job of both the candidates and the folks who want to advocate. i have great faith that the voters can figure it out. >> excuse me for one second. remember when you go to the west coast, you're talking the hundreds of millions of dollars. that is a lot of money spent on propositions that is involving something that you might have no clue or might not care about. there are ways to give even more crop. -- crap. byis largely funded individuals or large groups trying to get some point across on both sides. >> hello. it is great to have all of you folks here. unions in the united states are something like a% of the workforce. -- 40% of the workforce.
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their influence will wane. hollande you see the unions been a potent force? are they still strong -- how long do you see the union is being a potent force? are they still strong? >> you can start. >> on the future, i cannot really say. i can only go back to 2010 were some of the groups were unions. it was reported in the ""the wall street journal"." maybe not in television, but there are other ways the union spends money. at this point, they are still really strong. >> like any other sort of the sector, if unions did not innovate, they will have a problem. that goes the same for everyone.
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they have to think of unique ways to get at the heart of what they care about. there is a whole history of whether it is civil rights or women's rights or workers' rights and people remember why it was needed to be created in the first place. they do not know they had to work 18 hours and overtime. you got paid a number and you cannot even live in the town where you worked. there is good have to be some kind of evolution and innovation in that movement. there are all kinds of interesting things in the corporate affairs works for the follow resources and create economic development. during the recession, banks were not lending. there were taking their own investment managers and seeking opportunities. that is smart. that is looking at, how can i get economic activity? how can i get a return? i think there is a lot of
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compelling union out there that are thinking differently about it. to underestimate the kind of political clout that unions have in america, it would not be smart. >> i would say one thing to watch as we go forward, politically, especially from new jersey and east, the unions have different powers in different states. it is important to watch is the union sector and the public force and the trades in the private sector. there are different views on politics and public policy coming from both sides. we are at an early stage on that. it is something to watch as we go forward in terms of the political objectives of the public sector and the private sector. i think ultimately you will see a bit of a division in that. the cracks there is this
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division between the public and the private sector. there is a certain number of tenants in the labor -- >> there is a division between the public and the private sector. there is a certain number of tenants in the labor sector. private-sector unions have a different obligation in order to go to work. there is private-sector activity in the economic me were you live -- economy where you live. it is different on how you focus on the main policy question. behind it, there is a view of the labor movement. >> thank you. >> thank you for coming here and talking to us. you guys talked before about the super pacs and how the candidates kind of influence what they say and how much what is being said is of their influence. i was wondering, a, how much on
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the super pac level is a wait and see what the candidate does with their campaign? or do you strike occurs with the issues? b, do you see more of the super pacs setting the issues in the election cycle are the wait to see what the candidate does? i was wondering what the influence of that is going forward. the super pac issues are the candidates themselves. >> super pac, let's throw that out for a minute's. it depends on their race. what both sides are armed with good upholsterers who are looking at numbers and d pollsters - goo dpol who are looking at numbers and
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strategies. look at indiana for example. for example. strong positions. republicans have a primary. at the end, the republican candidate has no money because he spent all that time attacking dick lugar. the polls show us we are doing great. we know that murdoch is sitting there with no money. do we jump in and try to help? we know he will raise money within the next few weeks. that is the kind of decision that all of these independent expenditures go through all the time. but sometimes there are -- in general, we like to take kids from the candidates. we do not coordinate our activity. -- in general, we like to take hints from the candidates. we do not coordinate our activities.
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no doubt, sometimes we are the ones to jump first. >> a great answer. >> traditionally, it is contrasting negatives. traditionally what you will see it is at the obama campaign was clear about this. there were not going to wait long to define mitt romney. from their perspective, they felt that they did not do a good job with the economic climate and everything that was going on. what jeff and his team pulled off sort of ingrained a certain perception of mitt romney. i think they did a really fine job of that. it is part of what the romney campaign is trying to position itself on how to move toward. >> the obama campaign did a -- i wonder what percentage you think
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of that ads non-presidential will be comparative? to date? >> that is a very good question. because outside groups cannot coordinate, i think it is interesting for a classic is. outside groups cannot coordinate with candidates and party committees. the candidate cannot start in our ads. we can go to a mitt romney event and film some footage, but we would be getting the same sting the news crews in debt. we cannot issue an act of mitt romney talking to them -- that news crews get. we cannot get an ad of mitt romney talking to the camera. if we were to run a positive ad about mitt romney, people will
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start questioning, where did you get the footage? in 2010, crossroads ran an ad supportive of senator robb portman in the ohio senate race we have the footage that is publicly available on youtube. within a couple of hours, the fcc complained that recorded needed to get the footage. that was a bit of a headache. we haven't run a positive ad since. no one was to have the litigation with the fcc over something silly. >> the democratic congressional campaign committee, the republican congressional, and their independent arms, they are doing a bunch of comparative ads. they do not coordinate. each of the candidates are throwing their information to
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each side. i think there might have been more are the closing weeks. i think voters are overwhelmed with the negative presidential. there might be more of a contrast. even the independent groups are saying, you know what, they sort of need a boost. they need to say something nice about these people. >> this will be the last question. we have a few minutes left. we want to give our speakers closing remarks. >> i am curious if you can for their and collaborate on the complexity of making these ads. i see there is a very delicate balance. what is the criteria that you use to create these ads? are they part of a campaign ad within the super pacs? deal looked at the other you loo at- doyo
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at the present anger governor romney? >> both sides are research based. both sides are armed with data. the want to attack various things and look at what people are persuaded by. social security and education and health care. what are the messages that will move people? once we are in the throws of the campaign, we have to be able to say, ok, we were going to do this, but the other side is doing this. maybe we need to go there. in the beginning, the best laid plans are there and and the inevitably go all over the place. that happens often in our jobs. i love everything about my job. i wake up every day and i do
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politics for a living and i have a blast. we love what we do. we love all of that and what we are doing and electing people that we believe in. it is never the same. that is nice. >> i would never underestimate the amount of research that goes into any political ad by a professional organization. with a small group, you are never sure what they are advertising on. for a bigger, there are literally 3 or four verifications' behind every assertion that we make. you never want to get and add cold from that television. -- you never want to get an advertisement pulled from television. we are researchers could literally make sure that every assertion that we make in an advertisement is will appointed with different levels of verification to make sure that
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the ad is 100% actual. >> the with the outside works are the people used to run campaigns -- the people with outside works of people used to run campaigns. the most responsible i think and the most affected outside groups are generally run its people significant campaign experience who understand things. >> to go on and went on and said, an outside group -- if the advertisement can be proved to be inaccurate, the tv station can pull them off the air. if you challenge it, they can be pulled off of the air. it is almost impossible to do that to a candidate. the candidate has the freedom to say whatever they want, but we are much more conscious. we spend a lot of time on this
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researching and making sure the facts are right. we do not want those ads pulled out. both sides figure out the ad and once they create it depending on the time frame, we might test the ad with focus groups or on line, there are plenty of ways to figure out if it will work are not. birth -- both sides are armed with a mass of information to get up small number of voters. >> we have a couple of minutes left. any last thoughts on the role that you think super pacs are playing in this presidential race? we love for you -- >> thank you. i would go back to what i was saying to the attention between an elected representative and the constituents. we're not influencing how the public thinks about obamacare.
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we are educating viewers about the record of the candidate or an elected official and their position on obamacare. it is difficult for a group to impact the people think about an issue or abortion or tax increases. these are values that have developed over decades with these voters. what you can do is educate voters, especially in situations where the canada or elected official has done something that is sideways -- where the candidate or elected official has done something that is sideways. you can think of what the alternatives are. you can have a situation where publicly funded or taxpayer funded ads and people not liking that taxes are funding negative ads, you can end up with all kinds of censorship. it is critical to look up alternatives before changing the system. >> obamacare, the most perverse bastardization done by the
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right wing. i always forget how many billions. even if you wanted to say it is true, every republican says unpaid support and are counted for the paul ryan budget. these are the things that i and a problematic in terms of how the policy debate and i think the super pacs make it work. you have individuals who have personal opinions that they are trying to force upon people. i think we would be better off what the candidates. i am happy to be part of the super pac. i am happy to defend barack obama. i would say he is the best president.
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that is phenomenal. do i wish that this did not have to beat? i do. the voters might say that they are not happy when tax funded campaigns, things have gone pretty smoothly in a lot of places. i would think the rhetoric does not match the reality. we will see where it goes. we will see what the next incarnation will be of super pacs. >> thank you for coming. we are running a campaign that is important to everyone in this room in new jersey. vote yes on a ballot question one. it is for a good reason which is to make our student world-class educated.
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but yes on question 1. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> the c-span campaign 2012 boss is on a five day tour to the state of ohio -- bus is on a five day tour to the state of ohio. students still those who they were supporting in 2012 on the most important issues. here are some students from a university. >> i think the most important issue in the presidential election will be the abortion omney.with president runni >> of the most important issue to me in the election is i
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education. >> the most important issue for me is jobs. it is my first year in college. i need the money. i have been looking all >> i think the most important aspect of this election is college tuition. i think everyone should be able to be able to afford to go or what to go. getting everyone in school is very important. >> find out more about this c- span political coverage and check out our debate hub at . ckac-span.org mitt romney and paul rowe and will be campaigning in fisher's bill, and virginia. we will have live coverage: by your comment on the c-span. recently, latino and african-
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american community leaders says republican party needs to address issues important communities. this discussion focused on the impact of the minority vote and do voter i.t. laws throughout the country. this is one hour and 45 minutes. -- boater identification laws throughout the country. >> [inaudible] on the eve of the first presidential debate of 2012, our focus will be timely and important. that is it to discuss and i like the impact of minorities and women on the 2012 presidential and legislative elections. inaugural is being held before the first
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presidential debate between president barack obama and the government romney. tonight's town hall meeting provides us with a unique and strategic opportunity to put our import and crucial minority vote front and center. because this is about us, our family, our committee. it is about our future. almost of you know that about 35 states have reportedly passed measures that will restrict the right to vote. particularly among black and hispanic voters. probably many of you have heard today that the state of pennsylvania struck down. these measures could bar as many as 5 million potential voters from casting their vote on who will lead our country for the next four years. long-term effects of this could severely impact our country moves forward. the impact could be just as significant as the well mound brown vs. board of education, a landmark supreme court case in
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which the court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white student was unconstitutional. some seemed to think that one of the candidates, and i won't name which one, stands for turning back clock in many ways. essentially, minority voter participation will play an integral role in picking the winner of this year's presidential election. the town hall meeting tonight will strategically discussed the who and why minority voter participation and awareness can bring to the racial and ethnic minorities. the moderator for tonight's meeting is none other than roland martin you have seen him on cnn and you have heard him on the radio. he is a national award winning journalist and an author, a commentator where he has " washington watch." and he is a cnn analysis -- cnn
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analyst appearing on many shows. without further ado, i get your moderator, mr. roland martin. [applause] >> thank you very much. i'm certainly glad to be here. i want to get right to it so we don't hold you to long and welcome other folks were watching online as well. you can tell folks as they can go to brownv2012 and watch this online. i want to introduce -- sitting next to her is estuardo rodriguez jr., consultant on democratic issues. next to him is e. faye williams, president of the national council of black women. to her left is lenny mcallister , author and radio host of "get
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right with lenny mcallister." we also have brent a. wilkes -- he's way down there. you switched on a brother. we have parked hector sanchez, a national chair of the hispanic -- director for the epicenter of latin american advancement. next to him, we have run busby was set black chamber of commerce. a leftist bio out. let -- next to him is alex nogales, director of the national hispanic media coalition. and we have brent a. wilkes, and for the league of united latin american citizens. and pulling us up on the at there is -- they changed it on me. let me get in here and make sure
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i have this right. we did some switching up here. i'm discussing to make him into itself. go right ahead. >> i'm with a that u.s.-mexico chamber of commerce. >> the have about 30 sheets over year. let's get right to it. i want to go right to the news of the day. there are a couple of things that jump out. the decision in pennsylvania are acquiring a voter i.d.. the court said it could go into effect next year but not enough time this year. what do you think that impact will be in terms of november, not just the presidential election but all other races as well. this decision followed an appeal to texas voter i.d. law and the cross-country. >> we were talking about this
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pine the stage. thank you for coming out. if you look at the polls between governor romney and president obama, that looks as though pennsylvania is going to be blue and the democrats will win at at the top of that ticket. they will look at a republican- run legislature and say you tried to jam this to the courts and you are hoping he would get tied up in the courts and would stay in effect for 2012. now that it has been struck down, you may have that power and invigorated voting base, particularly in philadelphia and pittsburgh or the majority of the blue power of the state is based. you may see an actual is later, not necessarily the presidential race be affected, but you may see the state legislature flip from maine republican to democratic which will be to having a republican governor and democratic legislature for the next two years going into their
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gubernatorial race. it's not just at the top of the ticket or this will have the affect. >> we saw what would happen in pennsylvania where that legislature said they were passing a law to combat voter fraud. yet when they were sued company filed documents with the state that said they had no proof of the voter fraud. if the voter i.d. law was put into effect, even in november, there would be no guarantee to stop the level of voter fraud. you had the leader in pennsylvania who said on tape very clearly that because of voter i.d., that would guarantee a but robbie win. -- a nit romney win. >> the voters oppression legislation that would across the country which all the same bottle up the anti-emigrant -- anti-immigrant legislation. it was a campaign to suppress
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mainly black and hispanic voters. many of these proposed bills were thrown out there without any real study done behind it. where was the study? how many cases up voter fraud to you have? now we have some good news but there are still some money out there. >> i see this as a respite for the past our communities are on. reminds me of the still much to montgomery march earlier this year when the african-american and latino community came together on these issues -- voting rights and immigrant rights. many of the legislators who have advanced a restriction laws are the same ones who were advancing anti-emigrant anti-latino laws. i think the decision is great. it's a signal to our community what happens when we work together not only from litigation strategy. there's an incredible strategy on the ground of community
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working together to educate voters about what is going on and to get the ready. at the same time for things to come. the decision today sends a signal that those who care and talk about the protection and integrity of our electoral system, i don't talk about how to allow every eligible american boat and not make it more difficult for americans to cast a vote. >> i want to ask you this question and that is how do african-americans and hispanics get whites and to also understand these boater i.t. loss effect a segment that population -- voter i.d. laws affect a segment that population. states that pass laws that say you cannot use a student i.d. to vote. yet today state id. that is not just black and hispanic, but an estimated 20% of the elderly is impact as
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well. that's not just black and hispanics as well. unfortunately, what you see the folks fighting a voter suppression, they have largely been black and hispanic. >> you are absolutely right. but a lot of them to realize this and they don't want students are seniors to vote because they don't believe they will be voting for them. the effort has been working as a much based on suppressing the minority vote, but unfortunately i do agree there is a lot of enthusiasm about. there are still a couple of concerns. number one, the of taken a lot of our energy throughout the fall and focused on these voter suppression built across the country and in pennsylvania. >> hiding these laws as opposed to registering people to vote -- fighting these laws as opposed to registering people to vote. >> yes. that is going to be this confusion. they can ask for the i.t., her
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bucket they're going into vote even if they to have the i.t. but how that will take place at the grass-roots level is something we have concern about. >> are any of your people getting groups to operate as poll watchers and make sure that if that happens, you don't actually have to have the id to vote. >> today, there was a -- >> . his book on the lyndon baines johnson and -- >> the context couldn't be better. it talks about in this house what are african-american brothers and sisters go through
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just to have to register to vote. people put their lives on the line. people did everything just to get the real possibility to vote. today, you almost have 50 years or more. we are going , but it is should not be acceptable. it will be interesting to put it into context why these very interesting to have the strategic conversations between both communities. dot one of my closest friends fighting in the strike with all of these strikes -- having this conversation and the black brown coalition is not something new.
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is something we can take at a new level, especially when the committees are facing the biggest challenges in the nation. of employment, the highest rates of dropouts, so the momentum of have biggest town hall meeting is unique in the strategic approach of the background of vote. >> who thinks this is a precursor to get the voting rights act outlawed? >> in keeping with what was said years ago, i have been sick and tired of life, but now i'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. what this is going to do is force all of us to be actively involved and see that as freedom is a continuing thing but. just because we ritchie -- just
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because we achieved the right, many pay the ultimate price, i think this is going to motivate a lot of people to be poll watchers, to be volunteers, to get people out to register to vote at see that it does not just get them registered to vote. i read that 50,000 latinos turned 18 every single month. imagine the impact at that will have undercoating and anergy and our belief that we can make a difference. police seized laws going down in texas. i think that's just going to give the people more energy to give the belief there are fair people in our system and that our country and they will want to help us. that will include the whites. >> in 2008, our communities got engaged and motivated. for many of us, it was first
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time voting. we talked a lot about change and we voted for change. we say that we were really in -- we were behind that change but it takes time. this is more about guarding it change. i think 2008 was about a changing of the guards. as a business organization, we sometimes look at it from the individuals. but at the black chamber, we look at it from many of our communities are based on small- business owners. a lot of their rights and the bill's being looked at and past are effecting our communities more so that our counterparts at the republican party. >> i want to get back to the original question -- we have
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blacks and we have grounds that are going to be very enthusiastic about this but we cannot do it alone. we have to go to the white decent folks out there who look at the same thing we're looking at and say this is not right. we need to vote for the candidate that's going to do right by all of us. we have to do what we have always done -- one on one grass- roots while at the same time making sure all these stories go to the press and let the press know about them. that we want to convince them and we have to act as one. >> there is no question that section 5 will be challenged in the supreme court and the voting rights act is very much in jeopardy. but i don't think what they're doing is helpful to their case. what is going to win the day as section 5 is based on is there
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evidence of discrimination taking place right now? >> i literally had this conversation with a friend of mine who is a prominent conservative and i said you are providing the evidence for the court to say -- your argument is that was 40 years ago and not at the at to say it actually happened 40 days ago. >> you look at the identification that will accept, and will accept a gun license, which is shocking to me how blatant you could be. where is the larger of rage? we organize and challenged lawsuits, but the outrage that should be there when you are so clear as to who you are trying to give preference to and who you are trying to suppress. >> ron talked about this notion of change. i have articulated this talking to folks at the white house and
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others. how the issue when use a change, you can be in this great that we can talk about hope and change and it can literally beat 100 different ideas of what that is. after two or three years, half of this room can say i got what i wanted and the other half can say i didn't get what at what it. to me, that was a great campaign slogan. it works because anybody can say this is my hope and change. but the problem is when you don't define it clearly, you have people to say i did not get what i was looking for. co how do you see the electric, specifically african-americans and hispanics over the next month, but also the matter, make it clear and defined this is for us with the issues are what we say change? >> i had a professor once upon a
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time at the vanderbilt. he pointed out there is only one constant in life, and that is the change. therefore, change is going to happen whether we like it or not. if you are a conservative, chances are you are on the wrong side of it. if you are a liberal, you will be disappointed because you are too far ahead of it. and whether you like it or not, it is going to happen. how with going to happen that how it's going to affect different groups is anybody's guess at this point. but i would like to put in a plug here for our chamber is by national. we represent u.s. businesses in mexico and mexican businesses in the u.s.. people say mexican businesses in the u.s.? what are you talking about?
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things like major u.s. companies sparked are often either owned outright or partially own by mexican companies. this has happened since we have nafta, the north american free trade agreement. that opens things up for a santa -- that opened things up for us and we have carlos slim in mexico who owns and runs the telecom giant, but he also has a huge stake in the "in new york times." things have changed in that u.s. and what i wanted to say was this issue of registration of voters and what kind of identification you can use, strangely enough, we should probably look to something i
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would call mexican technology. the recent election in mexico, everybody voted, nobody asked you whether you are allowed to vote, registered to vote, because the only way to vote was to have a registration card from the national voter registration office. that was given to everyone across the country. that is not your car or a license. your driver's license come from each state like it does in the u.s. by your voter registration card comes from the federal mexican government. it is a different series of proof that is needed. you need to prove you are a mexican citizen. but that is it. they don't care how you are going to vote or where you're going to vote from oracle -- you get a card, as your autograph on it and also has your
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fingerprint, so there is no faking both at the same time. it is a rather high-tech card. but is given out by the federal electoral commission. this is something we should think of the future in the u.s. >> how you know it's going to happen there -- a lot of people don't understand about the bugging process' in the united states is that there is no federal standard. -- the voting process in the united. they're still governed by state standards. then you have county standards. in ohio, extended early voting hours in republican-leading counties and limited voting hours and democratic-leaning counties. that gets into the issue of some people have electronic ballasts. some people have punched ballots, bubbles because the county says what we can afford. i think that part of the problem
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in the united states is we have too many standards and there's no consistency when it comes from going to one locale to the next. >> i want to comment or comment. states' rights -- wouldn't abraham lincoln be somewhat surprised to see that his party is supporting states rights over national rights and national unity? it's rather strange. >> i will say many of those southern dixiecrats would be strange politically, so it sort of cuts both ways. >> that goes to the point of which are talking about. when you talk about unchanged, what should that look like in the next four months and then the next four years. it's interesting to look at this controversy as a way to get more
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politically savvy. you look at of voter i.d. lot yet to ask about racism or is this about political late as? my party, the republican party has not engaged minorities or 40 to 50 years. rather than engaging these committees, some of the strategy has been what's the better way to make sure we can guarantee some victories? is it engage in these communities or is it all will alliance of if we as communities can understand what that means and i understand there's a segment of politicians that take our boat for granted and say what they are going to vote for them regardless and -- there is an opportunity to say we need it responsiveness from both parties. lead the republican party to step up and that's one thing i try to do. but we also need to democrats to be more responsive so moving forward -- we learn from these
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situations and say we cannot tolerate the political laziness nor can we tolerate delays in this we see once people are actually in office and not on the campaign trail. >> a cnn poll cannot today -- another poll was out last week that showed latinos are polling at 70% support the president. for african americans, polling is that about 94% for the president. who believes it is a danger for both minority groups to pull with those numbers for one party? does that hurt ability to negotiate with the other side if they are in power on a petrol or state level? >> -- federal or state level? >> i agree with my panelists here that we're in the best interest of the communities to ensure both parties have the
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necessity to fight for our vote. that means regardless of party, people are going to have to be responsive to their constituents. let's face it -- the integrity of our voters system should not be a polarized, partisan debate. we should make sure everyone cares that are doing the right thing. voting is the same thing. what i would say about polling right now is people take a slice in time, like right now, the percentage of people supporting one candidate or the other two assessed that is aesthetically what communities are going to be. you said it is very well. you out one party or a set of candidates who are now reaching out to our communities, who are not taking positions on issues that energize and matter to our communities, then it is a result of query you are going to see the support of the voters. but a lot of times, it is
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interpreted the other way. this community is only going to vote this way regardless. how are voters are not be enough given a real choice. we want both parties to have to fight. we don't want to be taken for granted by one or neglected by the other. at the end of today, the electorate, the country has always when we get polarized that way. we need to create an entire but we are pushed to have to respond to these issues and work together as opposed to making political speeches. >> i want to jump in here. when you hear the rhetoric as to why the dream match did not pass in 2010, senator harry reid laid the blame at the feet of republicans. but there were five democrats who did not vote for the tree
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back and they had to fight on boats. had those five voted, the dream that passes. -- the dream act passes. why have democrats not been sufficiently taken to task for that? of forgetfect example party, here is an issue we care about as opposed to the letter in front of or behind art is? >> that is an interesting -- behind our neighbors. >> i think democrats need to stop playing defense and playing offense. they have not been willing to spend political capital it requires. on the other hand,

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